


Though They Go Mad

by TheSigyn



Category: Beauty and the Beast (TV 1987)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-17
Updated: 2009-05-17
Packaged: 2018-03-31 00:11:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 28,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3957151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSigyn/pseuds/TheSigyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vincent snarled, not entirely surprising his Father. "She is in prison Father! A prison of her own choosing. The world Above has betrayed her, battered her beyond recognition! She has already rejected it, hiding in shadows, in a cold, impersonal cell, in memories of our possibility." Catherine is discovered alive and well in a mental institution. Only Vincent can convince her that her dreams are the reality. A highly regarded "She's Not Dead".</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Published originally on The Steam Tunnels, 4/8/09

> Though They Go Mad

[Sigyn](mailto:sigyn@computerconnect.net)

Prologue. 

Journal of Charlotte Bakster. 

Note by Dr. Muriel Malachy: Real names have been redacted to protect the innocent.

October 15th

And death shall have no dominion.  
Dead men naked they shall be one  
With the man in the wind and the west moon;  
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,  
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;  
Though they go mad they shall be sane,  
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;  
Though lovers be lost love shall not;  
And death shall have no dominion.  
  
And death shall have no dominion.  
Under the windings of the sea  
They lying long shall not die windily;  
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,  
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;  
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,   
And the unicorn evils run them through;  
Split all ends up they shan't crack;  
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.  
No more may gulls cry at their ears  
Or waves break loud on the seashores;  
Where blew a flower may a flower no more  
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;  
Though they be mad and dead as nails,  
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;  
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,  
And death shall have no dominion.

That was the poem. 

 

October 26th

I’m sorry Dr. Malachy. I have nothing to write. 

October 29th

Dr. Malachy says I need to keep a journal of my thoughts and emotions as part of my treatment. I have few thoughts and fewer emotions. I’m a mad woman, perforce without a history, and without a future. All I want in this world never existed in the first place. I’m going back to bed. 

October 31st

I was going to ignore this journal. I was writing terse commentary and allowing the entire thing to become a joke. But tonight I saw on the lawn a man in a black cloak. I caught my breath. I thought at first that I was going mad again. I even had a fleeting thought that he was actually coming for me. It was only a Halloween Dracula, and the moment he turned around I knew I was all right. But now I’m thinking I should try to write it down. It hurts so badly to think of it, and I’m afraid to consider what it all means. "Though they go mad they shall be sane." I think I was happier when I was still mad. Now I am sane, and I feel no joy in anything. 

Dr. Malachy knows all of this. It took a long time to tell her what I’d been thinking; I was still in my fantasies and believed I needed to keep it all secret. When I finally admitted to it, she told me what it must have meant. False memories and self-induced psychosis, compounded by trauma and preeclampsia and postpartum depression. Lots of talk about my internal animus and the effects of mental and physical trauma. Denial of terrible facts. I think I’ve blocked out most of what they did to me, burying it in my fantasies. I preferred my fantasies, and who wouldn’t? I wasn’t alone in them. 

I drove myself mad to keep myself sane. What irony. They captured me, I remember this clearly. And I was betrayed by M — , that’s public record now. When I finally got together enough to look it all up, I found all of that. How M — had been found out, his subsequent assassination, and the death of poor E — . Whatever happened to me was the tip of a very terrible iceberg which seemed to overshadow everyone I’d ever known. Not that I was involved in any of that. I was still howling at the walls and cowering in darkness under my bed, muttering poetry. 

I miss being mad. I miss the strength and comfort I felt. I don’t miss those tortured times in the hospital when I couldn’t find any words but Dylan Thomas, when all I wanted to be was as strong and powerful as the animus I created, when I couldn’t find myself. But the early stages of this madness, still in my confinement, that I miss. When I created the dream of Vincent, when I truly believed in it, that he would come and rescue me, that the baby they’d forced me to carry was _his_ , so I could allow myself to love it. I think I still love it, wherever it is. No matter it was theirs, it was also _mine_ , and in many ways is still mine. I’d have named it for Mother if it was a girl. I think I remember it was a boy, and I hadn't decided what I would have named a son. I couldn’t name it Vincent, that’s me. Jacob, maybe, though that name came from my fantasies, too. 

That’s the problem. After all this time, I can’t decide when I started the fantasies. It would make sense that I created them in isolation during my pregnancy, as they did their best to torture me softly. But if that was the case, why didn’t I make up any memories from before I was attacked in the park? I guess I did change a lot after that time. Did I first invent Vincent after that terrible cutting incident, five years ago? If I did then I’m madder than I thought, and it didn’t take much for them to push me over the edge. 

I think I just created the memories to keep me amused in my confinement. That seems the most likely. False memories, overlaid over the real ones. I did relive them again and again, the first moment I saw Vincent, the times he held me in his hands, how he protected me, was there when I needed him. Thinking of Vincent was my only entertainment in that dark room they kept me in. The only thing that kept me, so I thought, sane. God, I loved him. How I needed him in that little room, when I was all alone. I even imagined reasons why he couldn’t come to me, an illness, a madness, such as I was slowly undergoing. I guess part of me knew I was going insane. 

I even imagined he came to me as I was dying. As I thought I was dying. I suppose it was a morphine hallucination, but a lovely one at that. An angel to wing me to my rest. I wish I’d never woken up from that final fantasy, the feel of his warm lips on mine. But I did wake, to searing light and roaring grief and horror for my lost child and the kind of bestial madness that makes me shiver when I see the videos they made of me. I’m amazed I wasn’t squatting to relieve myself on the floor like a dog. I don’t remember much of that time. 

That’s a lie, I remember it all too clearly. Every moment. I don’t want to remember. It was all much the same, one day exactly like the rest, except for those traumatic moments when they cut the mats from my head, cut the dangerous nails from my fingers. No visitors, no friends, no one who even knew my real name. 

No, there was the one girl, now I think on it. (Since I’m writing things down, I might as well write this.) There was that moment when the pretty red headed woman came and spoke to me. I remember her. I still wonder about her. She was the first person I saw who seemed strong as I wanted to be. She seemed to have something like what I imagined Vincent to have, an empathy. I trusted her. There’s no official record of her coming to see me, of course. I was still Aurora Bird then, too crazy even for a new name. 

The police tell me I can go if I want to sign myself out. They’ll help me build a new life as Charlotte. But I don’t have anywhere I want to go, and I don’t feel up to facing it. I don’t like this place, but the world Above... I should cross that out, but Dr. Malachy would probably like it if I kept it. The world Outside holds nothing for me now. I don’t know why they’re bothering to keep me under identity protection. I don’t know anything, and I went too crazy for my testimony to be of any use. Once you’re imagining huge lion men who leap into the fray to save you at the slightest peril, there’s nothing to say you couldn’t imagine anything else. But I suppose the men who captured me don’t know that, and if They knew I lived They’d still try to kill me. That is if They’re still around. Whoever They are. 

There’s nothing for me now. I have no family. It isn’t safe for J – or J– or P — or any of my other actual – not imaginary – friends to know I’m still alive. Besides. I don’t want them to know I’ve gone mad, and still cling to this madness as my only lifeline. Yes, Dr. Malachy, I can’t bring myself to forget any of it, or accept the real memories I know exist. I still prefer the fantasies, in my heart. But I’d rather my friends accepted that I died, still the strong and healthy C— they used to know. 

C– is dead. I’m "Charlotte" now. And Charlotte is a crazy woman, willingly confining herself to an institution. 

I’m sorry Dr. Malachy. I’ve been at this journal for over an hour, but I don’t think this is helping. 

***

Chapter 1

***

"Catherine," Vincent said, loving any excuse to say the word. 

"Up, Vintint!" said Baby Cathy, holding her arms up to him imperiously. 

"Sorry," said Lena, coming up behind her. "I was just about to take her to the creche. She just took off when she saw you." 

"That’s all right," Vincent said quietly, lifting the young child up and giving her a hug. He was a little sore from a long day working on shoring up some of the older tunnels, and he had planned on taking a quick soak in the hot springs to wash the sweat and dust away before picking up Jacob from the creche. He wanted wash and get Jacob quickly, as he had a feeling the boy was somewhat upset. But Baby Cathy was not a child to be easily denied. 

"Vincent! Vincent!" cried a young voice, running from the side tunnel which housed the creche for the smaller children while their parents were working. 

"What is it Geoffrey?" he asked. 

"It’s Jacob, hurry!" 

So his vague feeling was more than just a feeling. Vincent passed Baby Cathy to Lena and took off more quickly than they could follow. He slipped into the comfortable room filled with baby toys and absorbed the scene in less than a second. 

The small golden haired boy was wrestling angrily on the carpet with Julio. Jacob was crying out like a tiny kitten, pounding on the older boy with fast and furious hands. Vincent swooped down and grabbed the child, holding him firmly by the arms so that he could not continue his blind assault. 

"I’m sorry!" Julio said, panting a little. He had a blackened eye and his lip was bleeding. "I’m sorry, I’m sorry!" 

"What is this?" Vincent asked, trying his best to project an aura of calm. The truth was, he was frightened. Jacob was still squirming and cheeping in his arms. 

"I’m sorry!" Julio cried again. "I wasn’t trying to upset him!" 

Jacob finally realized that his prey was out of his reach and relaxed in his father’s arms. His angry roars collapsed into all out howls of remorse, and he buried his head in Vincent’s shoulder. 

Vincent sighed and looked about. There were half a dozen children there, mostly under the age of five, but a few were older. "Where’s Mary?" 

Samantha stood against the wall, looking shocked. "I’m sorry, Vincent," she said. "She went off to get a bottle for Elsie. I was supposed to watch the little ones while she was gone, but it all happened so fast. When I tried to get in the way..." Her voice was trembling. 

Vincent frowned over Jacob’s cries. "What?" he asked. 

Samantha held her shaking hand out as if she was ashamed of herself. A series of four puncture marks were clear on her hand, marked and bruised rather than bleeding, but clearly from a bite. Vincent sighed. "You take Julio and find Mary," he said, "and both of you should go to Father if you need to. We’ll sort this out after you’re tended to." Jacob was crying so loudly, and the rest of the children were still staring at him in horror. Vincent looked about for rescue and found it in the form of Lena, poking her head in the door. She had followed with as much speed as she could, carrying a two year old child. "Lena?" Vincent asked. 

"I’m on it," Lena said, setting Baby Cathy on the ground with the others. "Okay, everyone, we’re going to play a game. Can everyone lift their hands over their head, and we’ll pretend to be the sun. Now," and she started a little rhyme. Vincent left before the children had really gotten caught up in the game. 

Vincent held his son very tightly as he carried them back to their chamber. The little boy’s tears had subsided to something less strident, but none the less heartfelt for all that. Vincent was frightened. He had recognized the look on his son’s face, recognized a tiny version of his own roars of rage. If Jacob was prone to loss of control, it was very serious news indeed. 

He had been pleased and amazed that as a baby Jacob had no sign of the same – he banished the word "deformities" and replaced it with "differences"– that Vincent had always had to endure. Shortly after Jacob started teething it became apparent that he hadn’t missed out on _all_ of the differences. His slightly elongated canines had been a cause for concern. His flesh, tempered by Catherine’s, had been more delicate than Vincent’s, and he had lacerated the inside of his own mouth before the inside of his lips had scarred and – for lack of a better term – callused. His nails also seemed to be thicker than normal, though not as thick and clawlike as Vincent’s own talons. They had not been like Vincent’s claws, in they _could_ be trimmed; Vincent’s claws were fed with blood vessels that caused them to bleed and ache if more than simply filed slightly less sharp. If Jacob learned not to smile too widely, he would probably be fine on brief forays to the world Above. 

There had been some other differences, less obvious. He was quicker and more agile than the other children, and seemed to react to people’s emotions, the same way Vincent had even as a baby. Most curious, he seemed to age more quickly. Father said that Vincent had been much the same. Jacob was no more than one and a half, but he seemed like a child twice that age. He was speaking in short sentences and was more interested in stories than other infants. Father assured Vincent that the accelerated ageing had slowed nearer puberty, and that adolescence itself seemed longer than for most people. It was likely that the aging cycle evened out through these means. Vincent did remember his adolescence seeming to go on for ages. He had felt older than the other children until about thirteen, and then they all seemed to shoot up like weeds, changing their tastes and their interests and leaving him behind. It had evened itself out eventually, he figured, though he had felt very young in some ways until Catherine had drawn him out. 

But this was the first sign that Jacob had shown of Vincent’s uncontrollable temper. Given a choice, that was one aspect which Vincent would have wished had skipped his son altogether. 

Jacob wept until they got back to their chambers, and continued to weep even as Vincent sat with him and gently rocked him back and forth. Vincent suspected his son had a touch of empathy as well, so he suppressed all his worries and tried to exude a air of calm and acceptance. "We’ll make it right," he murmured. Jacob was probably frightened. When the beast rose in Vincent, it _was_ frightening. Heart breaking. Jacob’s tiny body had never suffered that surge of adrenaline before, and his muscles were probably starting to ache, too. Vincent remembered that being a symptom he suffered post fury in his youth. "We’ll make it right. You can apologize to Julio. He’ll forgive you."

"Don’t wanna," Jacob hiccupped. 

Vincent pulled him away a little and dried the tears from his face with the back of his hand. "What do you mean, you don’t want to?" he asked. "We’re not allowed to hit people. And Samantha! You know biting people is out of the question."

Jacob’s eyes widened. "I bit Sammy?"

Vincent nodded seriously. 

Jacob’s brows hooded in concentration. "Don’t remember." 

"I know," Vincent said. "You and I are special. We have to be very careful to control our tempers, more careful than anyone else. Because we can really hurt people, without meaning to. And if we hurt people, people will want to hurt us. And they would be right to." 

"But!" Jacob cried out. "Julio said... he said...!" and he started to cry again. 

Vincent held his son carefully and tried to project calm at him. "What could Julio have possibly said that would be worth hitting him? I can’t think of a thing."

"Julio said Mommy was dead," Jacob said. "He was lying!"

Vincent closed his eyes, his head bowed. This again. It was confusing, with so many orphans in the tunnels, so many abandoned children. To get a child to understand that they had a mother – and that everyone knew who that mother was – but that she was gone, was sometimes difficult. Jacob had had a seriously difficult time grasping it since the moment he could speak. He’d call out, "Mama!" and would go crawling about into disused tunnels. When asked where he was going, he’d say, "Where’s Mama?" Vincent tried to tell him that Catherine was with them only in spirit. He’d showed him the portrait by Christopher Jenshen, which hung prominently in their chambers. He said that Catherine had passed away, and they had to live in honor of her. Jacob had never been able to grasp that Catherine just wasn’t going to come around a corner and scoop him up. 

"That is no reason... to hit anyone. We may not like the truth, but we can’t get angry at anyone for saying it." 

"But it’s not the truth!" Jacob insisted. 

Couldn’t the boy feel how much this hurt him? "Jacob, I know it’s hard to accept." He had to pause and swallow. He had gotten over getting choked up when he spoke of Catherine’s life, but when he spoke of her death, it was still very hard for him. "Believe me."

Jacob shook his head. "You don’t."

Vincent looked up. "What?"

"You don’t accept. You know Mommy’s ‘live." 

Vincent forced a gentle smile. "She lives on in you, Jacob," he said. He hugged his son. Finally he decided trying to convince his son – again– of Catherine’s death was futile. Not to mention painful for both of them. "It doesn’t matter what you believe, Jacob. If it gives you comfort to think of Mommy as alive somewhere, do that. But you can’t get angry when other people say that she is not. They aren’t lying to you, they are saying the truth as they know it." He wasn’t sure the complicated concept would get through to the very young child, uncannily advanced as he seemed to be, but he had to try. He stared into his son’s eyes. He wished Catherine had given him her grey green irises, but instead his own clear blue gazed back at him. "Do you understand? We _never_ _hit_. Let them say what they like, we _don’t hit_." 

Jacob looked a little ashamed of himself. 

"Now, what don’t we do when we’re upset?"

"Don’t hit," Jacob said quietly. 

"Yes. If you feel yourself getting angry, you should walk away. _Run_ away if you must, but you must _never_ hit! Repeat that."

"Never hit," Jacob whispered. "Should I say sorry now?" he asked quietly. 

"Yes," Vincent said, and set Jacob on the floor, holding onto his hand as he led him to Mary’s nursing station. Neither of the wounds had looked serious enough to merit anything more, and indeed they were both still there, Samantha working on the hot and cold water dip that eased almost every pain and prevented swelling, and Julio with a cold pack on his eye, his lip already tended with an antiseptic. 

Julio sat up the second he saw Jacob. "I’m sorry," he said.

"Sorry too," Jacob said. "I forgot. _Your_ mommy’s dead." 

Julio nodded solemnly. "She is." 

"I’m sorry," Jacob said, rubbing his fist on his chest in the ASL word for ‘sorry’. Vincent had been teaching him. "We don’t hit. Or bite." He looked at Samantha. "Sorry, Sammy," he said, signing the word again. 

"It’s okay, Jacob," said Samantha, but both of the children looked on Jacob with new wariness in their eyes. Vincent suspected that it would travel quickly through the children not to get his son angry. It would result in a slight alienation. He sighed. Well, he’d endured it as a child. He was sure Jacob could too. 

He walked the boy back to their chambers and began listing all the questions he needed to ask Father about dealing with this new-found difficulty in raising young Jacob. He knew the reason Father had always been so protective of him, meddled so in his affairs even as he aged, was that those actions had been vitally necessary while Vincent was still a child. If Father hadn’t been a hovering worrywart, Vincent would never have survived, and there would have been casualties. It was only Father’s strength which had surmounted those obstacles, and it was impossible for the old man to abandon that role as Vincent grew. Fortunately, his hard-learned skills could be revived now as GrandFather. 

"Father?" Jacob asked. "When is Mommy coming home?"

Vincent closed his eyes. It was getting too hard to tell Jacob, _Never_. "I don’t know," he said finally. 

"You should go get her." 

Vincent picked up the young boy and held him very tightly. "If I knew how to do that," he said feelingly, "I’d do it in a heartbeat." 

***

His name was Brian, and he didn’t exactly want to be there. At least, he didn’t want anyone to _know_ he wanted to be there. Every time he talked about it to his friends all he did was complain about what a drag it all was. 

When his father said it would be good for his college resume for him to volunteer to read to the inmates at the institute, he actually thought it would be a good deal. Get him out of the house, give him an excuse to spend hours away. He could make up new Dungeon scenarios on the train. Moreover, he was starting to use his skills as Dungeon Master to write a fantasy novel. He was having troubles. He tended to want to add more action scenes than strictly necessary, dropping in the monsters he used in his games without weaving them into the plot, sacrificing established characters without any qualms, and he knew he needed more characterization. But this was his first novel, and he was rather proud of how it was progressing. His mom didn’t approve, of course. Neither did his dad. It was probably the first thing they’d agreed on in years; that Brian was wasting his time writing tripe. 

It wasn’t as much fun as he’d originally thought it would be. Often he was stuck reading the Bible or Fisherman’s Weekly, as most of the inmates at the institute were elderly, mentally impaired because of dementia. But it had its upside. The younger inmates were all really weird, and he had added many of the stranger characteristics into his novel. The schizophrenic who believed that aliens lived in the rose bushes was priceless. The best thing about reading at the institute was that sometimes, if he got a sympathetic listener or someone too blitzed out to care, he could read chapters of his own novel aloud to them. 

He was doing this now, and was just getting to the good part. "The Lady Catherine stumbled, her autumn gold hair catching the torchlight as she fell. Thorns dragged at her skirts, and the goblins laughed, sensing an easy victory. ‘No,’ Lady Catherine shrieked. ‘ _Vincent!’_ But it was too late to call for help, the goblins were less than a stone’s throw behind her. Her heart would be roasted tonight, and eaten still crackling from the fire. The Lady Catherine wept, knowing that she had failed. Then, just as all seemed lost, Sir Vincent, Knight of the Dark Cavern came roaring from the night. The goblins cowered, and then began to chatter in disbelief. The golden lion on Vincent’s shield glittered under the moonlight, and he grinned, showing feline fangs as he sized up his foe. One of the goblins took the opportunity to attack. Without a word, Vincent moved his sword, and the creature was left writhing in the dust." 

"Hey!" someone complained. "You stepped on my foot!" 

A newcomer looked down distractedly. "Sorry," she said to the dottering old man who had been sleeping during the recitation. 

Brian looked up from his manuscript, annoyed... and froze. "Ms. Chandler?" he asked. 

The woman twitched as she saw his face. "My name is Charlotte," she said hurriedly. "Charlotte Bakster." She turned and ran from the common room. 

Brian blinked. He knew he recognized Ms. Chandler from his father’s apartment building. What was she doing here, in New Jersey? What was she doing anywhere at all! It was a well known fact that Catherine Chandler had died. Brian had worried and waited during her disappearance, scanning the newspapers for news of her. He’d wanted to go to the funeral, but his father wouldn’t let him, telling him it would be tactless, they barely knew the woman. Brian thought that unfair, but he’d let his father win rather than argue with him. It wasn’t worth it. Besides, he didn’t want anyone to know that he had a slight crush on Catherine Chandler. On the day of the funeral he’d written her a graphic and epic death scene... it was later in this very manuscript, touching and heart wrenching. It had made his girlfriend cry when she read it.

He _knew_ that was Catherine Chandler. But she was supposed to be dead. 

If Ms. Chandler wasn’t dead... why wasn’t she Below... with Vincent? 

***

"I found _this_ wandering the tunnels," William said, pushing the sixteen year old boy into Father’s study. "He said he needed to speak with you." 

"Brian!" Father said. "What are you doing here? You know it’s dangerous–"

"No, I haven’t run away again, no one’s expecting me for at least an hour, and no one knows where I am," Brian said quickly. "I just didn’t know how to get a message to you other than to just... come down. It’s not like you guys have a phone."

Brian held a unique position Below. He knew and kept their secret, but he was not a Helper. It was suspected that someday, when he was older, he might be made so, but apart from being young, his actions had been rather irresponsible. He had been asked not to return to the tunnels, and finally agreed to this. There were many Below who found his knowing their secret quite vexing. He wasn’t truly trusted by any of them. 

Father looked at the boy, frowning. "You needed to get a message to us," he said, incredulous. 

"Yeah. Look, I... something happened to me the other day. I’m pretty damned sure, but she said her name was Charlotte Bakster, and when I tried to find her again, her name wasn’t on the room charts. I wanted to talk to her, but... I could have been wrong. I hardly recognized her, she looks really... well, nuts. Considering where I saw her, I guess that isn’t surprising."

Father tried not to laugh. He wanted to look stern, but this boy was so scattered. "Slow down and start at the beginning. What exactly are you trying to tell us?"

Brian took a deep breath. "I volunteer down at the Maplewood Institute, across the bay in New Jersey. You know, the nuthouse. Well, slightly nutty house, more like, no one’s dangerous there. My dad knew a guy there, don’t ask. I read aloud to the inmates. Lots of ‘em don’t get any visitors at all. I was there the other day, and I saw her there! But how could she be there? I know you probably all know about it, you have all these secrets, and I’m probably just getting my foot in it. But if you didn’t know, I needed to know, you know?" 

"No," said Father patiently. "Who exactly did you see at the Maplewood Institute?" 

"Ms. Chandler." 

The stillness in the room was so thick it settled around them like an eiderdown. After a long, tense moment Father found his chair and slowly lowered himself into it. A thousand thoughts were going through his head, and none of them were very pleasant. "Are you sure?" he asked. 

William made a small sound. "I’ll go and get Vincent." 

"No!" Father said, so vehemently it surprised him. "We have to be sure, before..." He turned back to the young boy from Above. "Are you positive of this?" 

"I recognized her," Brian said. "She looked different. Her hair’s short and she’s, you know, thin, and she’s not so stylish as she used to be, but..." he looked a little embarrassed as he said, "I’d know those eyes anywhere. I think she recognized me, too. Maybe not, I’ve changed a lot in the last three years. At least she recognized the story I was reading. Or bits of it." 

Father frowned. "Story?"

"Yeah. I used Vincent as one of the characters. Don’t worry, it’s a total fantasy, he’s fighting goblins, _no one_ could connect it to this place. But she came out as I was reading it. I’d never seen her in the common room before, and I’ve been going there for the last three months." 

"You only saw her the once?" Father asked. 

"Yeah. When I saw her she said her name was Charlotte Bakster, and she ran. I found the name on a dining list, but I couldn’t find out her room number. I looked under Catherine Chandler, too, but there was nothing." He frowned. "You _really_ didn’t know she was there?"

"We’re still not sure she’s there," said Father, trying to sort out his feelings. On the one hand, on a personal level he was thrilled with the possibility that Catherine could be alive. He had come to love her in the years she had been with Vincent. That said, the possibility had myriad horrors attached. Vincent was only beginning to come to terms with his grief. To spark this hope and crush it again would likely kill him. It might not really be Catherine, and then what would become of him? Worse still, she might not be the Catherine they knew. 

The Catherine they knew would never sit somewhere and keep herself from Vincent. This was a mental institute. If this woman Charlotte Bakster _was_ Catherine Chandler, she might be so mad she was not capable of making decisions on her own. She might have forgotten Vincent, and them. She might not want anything to do with them, and was hiding from the world Below as much as the world Above. If she was mad, she might be thinking anything. Her mind might be completely shattered. What would that do to Vincent? To have his Catherine, and yet _not_ his Catherine returned to him would likely drive _him_ mad, too. And what would that do to young Jacob? Father was no longer strong enough to be a Father to a boy such as Vincent had been, not alone. Jacob would be lost without Vincent. 

Yet how could he keep the possibility of her survival from him? That would be a crime in and of itself. 

There was one person he knew of he could trust to check this possibility out. "Thank you very much, Brian," he said. "I’ll have Jamie show you back to the surface."

"Couldn’t I see Vincent before I go?"

"Not now," Father said. He surprised Brian by adding, "He’s with his son. Please don’t repeat this to anyone else Below. It’s a rumor we cannot risk spreading. When we come to know the truth of it, we’ll get a message to you. Do you know how to contact any of our Helpers?" He gave Brian a sheet of paper with the contact information of three different Helpers on it. "I’ll have you know, Brian, that should you turn out to be right about this, you will likely be considered one of our most valuable assets Above. In either case, you handled this very well." He looked at William. "See that he’s invited to Winterfest, would you?" he added. 

William nodded. Brian left feeling a bit overwhelmed and rather pleased with himself. He even managed to try flirting a little with Jamie on the way back to the surface, which didn’t get very far, but at least it made them both laugh. 

"William?" Father said as soon as Brian was out of earshot. "Arrange to have a message sent to Diana." 

***

"What is this about?" Diana asked. She’d been told to meet Father in a blind alley, which made her nervous. 

"I need to be able to trust you on something... something very important," Father said. "I can’t stress enough to you the urgency of the situation."

Diana frowned. She didn’t like the intensity in Father’s voice, or the lines of stress on his face. "Has something happened to Vincent?" she asked. 

"No," Father said. "I’ll get right to the point." Diana rather thought he’d been dancing around the point for a while now, considering he could have just written her a letter, but she held her tongue. "I have reason to believe that Catherine Chandler may not be dead."

Diana blinked. "You know this?" 

"No," Father said, but something in Diana’s looks worried him. She did not look wholly shocked. Surprised, yes, but not stunned rigid. "Did you have a hint as to this possibility before now?" he asked. 

Diana shook her head. "Kind of," she said. "But I thought she was dead, too. I didn’t see how she could survive." She frowned. "I never did see the body..." she mused. She shifted to professional stance and turned back to Father. "Do you know where she might be?"

"That is the difficult part," Father said. "And will require some delicacy. If the woman our contact spotted was indeed Catherine Chandler, she might not be the woman we all once knew and loved." 

Diana nodded. "If how I saw her last is any indication, she wouldn’t be," she said. "Where is she?"

"At Maplewood mental hospital, in New Jersey," Father said. "She said her name was Charlotte Bakster."

Diana raised an eyebrow. "She said her name?" she asked. "Sounds better than I was expecting. Unless it’s some new poem. I’ll check it out right away."

"Wait," Father said. "If it is not Catherine, no further action need be taken. If it _is_ Catherine... or _was_ once Catherine, I need to know approximately the state of her mind before I..." 

"Before you tell Vincent?" Diana said. 

Father looked down. "Yes." 

"Don’t you think that’s a little unfair to him?"

Father shook his head. "If there was any hope, I’d never try to keep her from him. If there was no hope, I would try to keep him from that pain." He looked at Diana. He did not know her very well. Her relationship was almost exclusively with Vincent, which was something that disturbed him. He had thought at first that it was merely desperation, a rebound connection with another woman Above. As he had come to know a bit more about her, he began to suspect it was more than that. There was something uncanny about Diana, almost as uncanny as there was about Vincent. He suspected they shared a gift, and that the bond they felt had less to do with love than with kinship.

Vincent’s relationship with her was nothing like with Catherine. She always disappeared the moment she truly enveloped herself in another case, and would stay immersed in these fresh cases for months. Only then would she drop a line to the world Below, asking if they needed anything of her. Mostly keeping a line open for Vincent. Father knew Vincent had visited her, occasionally, as he wandered the world Above. He knew Vincent’s feelings for her were not love. He was concerned what Diana’s feelings were. "Would you not try to spare him?"

Diana shook her head, more confused than negating. "It wouldn’t be my decision," she said. 

"But it is," Father said. "If she is beyond reaching, it might be better if he were not to know."

"If she is beyond reaching," Diana said, "she might not be beyond _him_." 

Father pursed his lips. "I will consider that," he said. "But it would be best to warn him, no matter the situation."

Diana nodded. "Very well," she said. "I’ll head over there tomorrow. You’ll know the way of things by evening."

"Thank you, Ms. Bennet," Father said. He returned to the car his Helper was driving him in, his incredibly out-of-date suit making him stand out even more than he would have in his tunnel clothes. 

Diana took a deep breath and asked herself if she was ready to face Catherine Chandler again. The last time she had done so, it had nearly broken her heart to pieces. Now that she knew Vincent, if things were as bad again, she knew she’d be hard pressed to recover. 

Wait. Vincent. Realization slowly dawned over her face. With a gasp, Diana began to run. If her suspicions were correct, there might just be a happy ending after all. 


	2. Chapter 2

> Chapter 2
> 
> ***
> 
> The first and last time Diana saw Catherine, it was not a pleasant experience. 
> 
> It was before she had met Vincent, almost before she’d really agreed to take the case. Her heart had been sore from a case she felt she had failed, which had resulted in the death of a six year old child. It was Joe Maxwell’s sense of desperation that had really prompted her to look into the case of the death of Catherine Chandler. 
> 
> Diana had gone to the hospital demanding to see Catherine Chandler’s body. The results of her autopsy had been missing several key elements, and she had gone in threatening to take the hospital to court and expose their malpractice. Eventually they had taken her to a room of cold storage and showed her the body of a woman of the approximate right age and size and coloring, and Diana had pursed her lips, told the attending physician that she wasn’t a fool, and that this was _not_ Catherine Chandler. 
> 
> She did look rather similar. If she had been any other investigator called in on the case she wouldn’t have noticed the difference. But she was Diana Bennet, and she had memorized Catherine’s face. 
> 
> After two hours of increasingly strident demands she was led into a private office. Someone of official status had explained that she could not see Catherine Chandler’s corpse, no matter the circumstances. Diana had stood up then, announcing she would return with a court order, and possibly the press. "You can’t do that," the director said. He took a deep breath. "May I take you to see someone else?" 
> 
> Diana frowned. "I have no desire to see anyone other than the body of Catherine Chandler."
> 
> "Yes, I understand that," said the director. "And you have seen the body of Catherine Chandler. But due to your stance on this subject I have placed a few calls to some members of your bureau. With their agreement, on your honor, I would like to show you one of my patients." He pressed a button on the intercom. "Ms. Carson, I’d like to arrange a team to visit Ms. Bird."
> 
> "Ms. Bird?" said the voice on the other end. She sounded trepidatious. 
> 
> "Yes. She has a visitor."
> 
> "Very well, sir," said the secretary. 
> 
> The director turned to Diana. He pulled a thick file from a locked drawer on his desk. "I’d like you to look at this file," he said. The name on the file was Aurora Bird. 
> 
> "Why are you showing me this?" 
> 
> "No reason," said the director. "I simply think your investigation might benefit from a visit to Ms. Bird." 
> 
> Diana was led through the hospital, through a locked door that sounded like a jail cell. Behind this door were wild eyed men and women, and the orderlies roved in squads. Ms. Bird was kept in a room at the furthest edge of the psychiatric ward. This was where the special cases were kept, where there were two doors you had to pass through. There was no security on Ms. Bird’s room, but the amount of security they’d already had to pass would have daunted most people, anyway. 
> 
> Diana took a deep breath before she peered through the narrow window. It was dark in the little room. There was a window to the outside, but it was curtained. "Why is it dark?" she asked. 
> 
> "She’s nuts," said the nurse without concern. " _She_ draws the curtains. She screams if we turn on a light. Screams herself horse. She likes it cold too, beats at the thermostat until we bring it down to sixty." The nurse looked around, and then pressed a couple of somethings into Diana’s hand. "Don’t tell anyone. It’s against policy, but this is the only light she doesn’t scream about. I can’t leave them in there, but sometimes I’ll sit in with her. She seems to find it comforting."
> 
> Diana opened her hand. A candle and a book of matches nestled in her palm.
> 
> "Go on in." 
> 
> "Is she dangerous?" Diana asked. 
> 
> "Only if you try to touch her. If you back away, she’ll leave you alone." 
> 
> Diana blinked and opened the door. A quiet muttering stopped as she stepped inside. "Hello?" Diana said. There was no response except a quickening of breathing in the corner. "My name is Diana Bennet. I’ve come to see you," she said. 
> 
> "Faith in their hands shall snap in two," muttered a quiet voice. "And the unicorn evils run them through." 
> 
> A chill ran up Diana’s spine as she heard those hollow words. "I’m going to light a match now," she announced quietly. 
> 
> "Split all ends up, they shan’t crack," said the voice. 
> 
> Diana took that as a statement to go ahead. She struck the match and held it to the candle. A hunted figure in a hospital gown and sweater cowered on the floor, in a nest she had made from the bedclothes. The bed itself was on its side, used as a barrier between the woman and the outside world. She cringed as Diana held the light closer. 
> 
> Diana swallowed. The sallow, worn face before her might once have been human. Now it was pasty and almost blue, even in the dim flickering light of the candle. Her eyes sank as if cut into her face. Where angels once danced, now devils ran. Her hair was cut short, presumably because no one could maintain it, and the creature in the nest was clearly past trying. Diana didn’t recognize the figure before her at all. The single line of the scar on the side of her face was the clincher. Diana felt a little ashamed. The corpse she had rejected as not looking like Catherine Chandler looked far more like Catherine than this tormented wraith. "Though lovers be lost, love shall not." 
> 
> "Cathy?" she asked. "Cathy, Joe sent me to look into your case." Catherine looked over toward the light, her haunted eyes narrowing. "You remember, Joe? From the district attorney’s office. Your friend." 
> 
> "And death shall have no dominion," Catherine whispered. 
> 
> Diana swallowed. This woman was so far from sane she was no longer human. What had they _done_ to her? "Cathy?" she whispered, taking a step toward her. 
> 
> And Catherine roared. She lunged out at Diana with her nails raised, leaping over the bed. Her nails had been blunted, roughly, probably by the hospital staff, as a precaution against just this. Diana scuttled back, expecting the nursing staff to jump in to protect her, but they stayed behind the door. Apparently, this kind of behavior had been expected. Catherine did not pursue. As soon as Diana was a few steps farther away Catherine crept to the far end of the room and began pacing, walking back and forth like a tiger in a cage. "Where blew a flower may a flower no more lift its head to the blows of the rain," she muttered to herself. Then she stopped. She looked directly at Diana and said in a clear voice, "Though they be mad and dead as nails. Break in the sun till the sun breaks down, and death shall have no dominion."
> 
> Something happened between them then. Those wild green grey eyes were straight and true for the first time. They bored into Diana, and after a moment two tears slowly leaked from them, running gently down the sunken cheeks. Diana felt something inside her twist. She had already decided to take the case, but something in this mad woman’s voice or eyes made a connection. From that moment on they were bound together. A sister. Another self. "And death shall have no dominion," Diana murmured. 
> 
> Then Catherine looked away, back down at the floor, and resumed her pacing. "With the man in the wind and the west moon. Though they go mad they shall be sane. Though they sink through the sea, they shall rise again. Though lovers be lost... though lovers be lost... lovers be lost...." 
> 
> Diana stepped back. There was nothing more she could learn here. Her hands were shaking as she stepped out of the dark room. 
> 
> ***
> 
> "What’s wrong with her?"
> 
> "We don’t know," said the director. "Clearly she underwent extreme mental and physical trauma. The autopsy report we gave you was accurate, such as it was. Her body only barely survived the morphine, and that can cause brain damage, but it doesn’t seem to fit. The narcan we injected her with counteracted the morphine fairly quickly. We suspect much of it might be an acute form of postpartum depression."
> 
> "Wait, postpartum?" 
> 
> "Yes. Aurora Bird was pregnant."
> 
> "Pregnant?" Diana blinked. That one fact hadn’t been in the official autopsy report. "Was she pregnant before or after she was captured?"
> 
> "We aren’t sure," said the doctor. "She’d only been gone six months. In theory this should mean she was pregnant before she was abducted, but if that was the case..." The doctor paused. "Take a look a this." 
> 
> "What’s this?" Diana asked, looking at the print out he handed her. 
> 
> "This is a DNA spectrum analysis of the amniotic fluid from the baby she was carrying. She still had traces inside her."
> 
> Diana raised her eyebrows. "Nothing but the best technology for this hospital," she said. 
> 
> "Yes. This is the baby’s DNA. And this is Cath... Aurora Bird’s. This strand therefore must have come from the father, but you see these inconsistences?" Diana did. "They don’t follow any pattern we’ve ever seen before. This baby had substantial differences deep in its DNA. Either the father carried some very interesting genes... or this baby was genetically engineered. And if that was the case, it is most likely that she was impregnated _by_ her captors, and kept as a carrier for this baby. Which would mean either the baby was premature, or grew at a faster rate than normal." 
> 
> Diana shook her head. "No wonder she’s gone mad," she said. She looked at the doctor. "She knows she’s mad. She keeps mentioning it."
> 
> "Perhaps. We’ve identified the poem as Dylan Thomas." He handed her a xerox of the poem. Diana's eyes fixed on the lines that Catherine had repeated, but hadn't finished, _Though lovers be lost, love shall not. And death shall have no dominion._ "Everything she says comes from those twenty some odd lines. Other than that she seems to have no words. She’ll roar and growl like an animal, paces, you’ve seen, like a tiger. She hides in darkness, refuses touch. She grows weaker by the day." The doctor looked grave. "We aren’t optimistic for her recovery." 
> 
> When Diana spoke to the doctor a few days later, asking for more information on "Aurora’s" condition, he told her that "Aurora Bird" had finally died indeed, and that Catherine’s body was to be released for burial. Diana was actually glad to hear it. Catherine had stayed alive long enough to bind herself to Diana, to give to her the burden of justice. Now she was finally at peace. 
> 
> As Diana sat through the funeral, eying a dozen weeping, nameless strangers, she was tempted to make her own statement. "Though they be mad and dead as nails, death shall have no dominion." 

***

When Diana had seen Catherine before, she had been acting mad, yes, but it was a madness similar to something else Diana had seen. Catherine had been acting like Vincent. 

She did some mental calculations. When Catherine had first been revived, at the height of her madness, Vincent had been in the deepest depths of his grief. Diana had seen Vincent when he was ill, injured. He too skulked in the deepest shadow, shied from true light, roared and lashed out if one should get too close. The poetry didn’t make much sense, but the thermostat did. Catherine might have been trying to duplicate the conditions Below, coolness and candlelight. Diana wondered if anyone had tried her with classical music, or more poetry. It didn’t matter. If the woman at the Maplewood Institute was indeed Catherine Chandler, she might not truly be mad... or not so mad that Vincent couldn’t bring her out of it. 

***

"Charlotte" sat in a threadbare robe in an impersonal room. She knew that she had once had money, once been accustomed to finer clothing. But the witness protection program hadn’t bothered to try and preserve her assets through her relocation, and she didn’t care enough to pursue. She had a memory of a Will, arranging for her assets, such as they were, to be donated to a trust kept in the name of a Margaret Chase, whose interest was doled out to benefit people she once cared for very much. But she was pretty sure she’d made up that memory to make herself feel better about having lost everything. She supposed her personal effects were with Jenny or Joe, and she’d just as soon they got to keep them. Her finances probably reverted to her father’s law firm, or were tied up in a dozen banks. She didn’t actually care. 

The room had a radio, which Charlotte kept on permanently to a local classical station, even at night. Sometimes what she would listen to would cause her to choke up, but she didn’t try to turn it off, or change the station. Three wide candles sat on the bedside table. It was the only decoration she had collected. This was a minimum security, voluntary asylum, so she was allowed matches to light the candles, so long as she kept them locked in the drawer. She lit them the moment the sun set, never allowing true darkness to descend in her room. There was a small collection of paperback books, mostly classics, and she was known to check books from the library trolley which came through once a week. Sometimes in the evening she could be persuaded to open the window to her room to let in some fresh air. After a few months the institution insisted that she eat her meals in the dining room like all the other inmates, but other than that, she kept to her room, and brooded. 

"You missed your appointment," said a voice at the door. 

Charlotte looked up. "I’m sorry, Dr. Malachy," she said tiredly. She turned to look out the window again. 

Dr. Muriel Malachy had at first thought that "Charlotte’s" reluctance to go outside, even to go outside her room, was a product of fear. She had undergone severe trauma and undoubtably suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. She had all the symptoms: hyper-vigilance, difficulty sleeping, nightmares, depression. The original trauma of the abduction had been compounded by the trauma of her subsequent madness, and it would have been no wonder that she feared the outside world. After a year as Charlotte’s doctor, Muriel was beginning to have another theory. Yes, Charlotte was probably wary of the world outside. But now she believed that Charlotte simply had no love for it, that its horrors and sadnesses were too much for her, and that its wonders and joys held neither for her. 

Charlotte was still a clearly intelligent woman. She even possessed a sense of humor, if it was a bit black. But she had no enthusiasm, and showed no interest even in the pastimes she permitted herself. Muriel was used to people with severe, psychotic depressions, and had originally steeled herself for suicide attempts, but there were none. The depression was pervasive and encompassing, a severe dysthymia more than a major depression. To be listless and disinterested and sad was a fact of life for Charlotte, and, it seemed, this would always be the case. 

Muriel crept into the room bearing a tulip in a glass. "I thought you might like this," she said. 

Charlotte pulled her eyes from the window and gave a polite smile. "Thank you," she said sincerely. She set the tulip on the table and touched a petal with her finger. "It’s lovely." Then she turned back to the window. 

Muriel sat down in the other chair and pulled it closer to Charlotte. "You want to tell me why you missed our appointment?" 

"I didn’t know what day it was," Charlotte said without inflection. 

"That’s the third monthly appointment you’ve missed. I’ve had to put that in your report."

"I’m sorry," Charlotte said, but she didn’t sound so. 

"Have you made any progress this month?" Dr. Malachy asked. 

Charlotte glanced at her. "Do you mean have I recovered any true memories?" she asked. "No." She looked back out the window. "I can make them up, but they don’t feel any more real than the fantasies. I don’t even try anymore."

"Why not?" she asked. "Why don’t you try to reclaim your life."

"It’s not my life anymore," Charlotte said. "I’m not that person anymore, not even on paper." She shrugged. "I don’t think I liked it all that much, to tell you the truth."

"Do you think you were always like this?" Dr. Malachy asked. "Without interests, without passion?"

Charlotte hesitated and then said, "Yes, I think I might have been. If I had passion in my life, why would I have had to make it up?" 

"Due to loneliness." 

"So why try to recover loneliness?" Charlotte asked. She fingered the stem of the tulip. "At the end of the day, my dream world licked the real world hollow." 

"That’s probably true," Dr. Malachy said. "Fantasies are usually better than the reality, or we wouldn’t need to fantasize. But the real world, here, is where you belong." 

Charlotte gazed up at her. "Is it?" she asked. She looked back out the window. "I can’t do any good in the world. Why reach out for something that has hurt me at every turn?" 

Dr. Malachy stood up. She couldn’t help patients that wouldn’t help themselves, and that was a proven fact. "I don’t suppose you’ve been writing in your journal?" she asked, knowing the answer to be no. Ever since that one entry at Halloween last year, she hadn’t touched the thing.

Charlotte shook her head. "I’m not allowed to write the fantasies down," she said. "There’s nothing else I want to think about."

Dr. Malachy pursed her lips. "Perhaps I was wrong about that," she said, sensing a possible opening. She had insisted when she gave Charlotte the journal that she only write about the real world. But there wasn’t much in Charlotte’s real world to write about, even if she had been vivacious and engaged in the life of the institution. Even if Charlotte was only writing down her fantasies, at least she’d be doing _something_ , not this torpid waiting for death. "You can write about whatever you want in your journal," she said. "It’s yours." She turned to go, and then paused at the door. "I read in your nurse’s report that you thought some boy recognized you?" 

Charlotte shook her head. "I haven’t seen him since. I’m not worried about it." 

Muriel sensed there was more to it than that. If people still wanted her dead, Charlotte was just as content to let them finish her off. She frowned. "What were you doing out of your room?" 

Charlotte looked up a little ruefully. "You won’t like the answer." 

"What is it?"

"One of the characters in the story he was reading was named Vincent." 

Charlotte was right. Dr. Malachy _didn’t_ like it. 

After Dr. Malachy left, Charlotte stood up and pulled out the blank journal. The first page was the poem that had seen her through her madness. After that there wasn’t much except musings on that moment when she had thought she’d seen Vincent on the lawn. There was something she wanted to say. She knew it was madness. She knew Vincent only ever existed inside her. But if that was the case, she might still get a message to him. 

It took her a long time to write it. The sun had set by the time she realized that all that was in her heart could be distilled down to three words. 

She looked down at the entry she had written, and wished with all her heart that her message would travel down the labyrinthine passages of her mind (which Dr. Malachy said the tunnels Below represented) to the protected, safe and beautiful place she’d imagined (which Dr. Malachy said represented her peace of mind) filled with diverse and gifted, amazing people (who represented different aspects of her personality) to the beautiful, sensitive personification of her animus (the inherent male aspect of her psyche, the protector, and that which she, as a female, could love about herself.) 

She added the date, May 1st, above her entry. Ah, May day. Was that why Dr. Malachy had given her a tulip? Charlotte really had no personal sense of days. 

The entry consisted of only one line: 

"Vincent. I miss you."

***

_Vincent. I miss you._

Vincent closed his eyes. Those haunting words, such as he’d used to hear just after her death, when she called out to him, asked him where he was. It was too much. He wished to God that Jacob would come to accept Catherine’s death _soon_. Vincent couldn’t take it much longer. 

The constant requests for his mother were getting more insistent. Today handing out May baskets of flowers, (collected from discards outside flower shops by the older children), Jacob had insisted they save one for Mommy. Vincent had agreed, and they tucked the tiny basket at the base of Catherine’s portrait, but that hadn’t truly mollified the child. Jacob’s demands had begun to haunt Vincent. It made him restless and unhappy. He had wondered, at first, why Jacob insisted on doing this. For everyone else, Jacob was like Vincent, tailoring his responses to create a smile or a laugh. Vincent was beginning to suspect that Jacob _wanted_ him feeling anxious, pacing the corridors and feeling dissatisfied, as if making Vincent unhappy would force him to go and fetch his mother. 

He had made another request for Catherine as Vincent had put him to bed in the alcove he had carved out for him with his own hands. (It had taken him over a month, and his room was covered with rock dust nearly half a year.) "You know I can’t do that," Vincent said. "But I’ll sing you her song." Jacob took a deep breath and reluctantly agreed. 

Vincent’s voice was more suited to poetry than to song, but he had adapted it for this lullaby.

Sleep, my pretty one.

Rest now, my pretty one.

Close your eyes;

The day is nearly done.

Rest your head; 

Tomorrow will surely come.

Vincent knew poetry backwards and forwards, and he knew these were not the most eloquent or beautiful lyrics in existence. That hardly mattered. Catherine had once told him her mother sang that song to her when she was a girl. She suspected her mother had made it up. Vincent was determined that the lullaby would continue for another hundred years, if he had anything to say about it. Anything that reminded him of Catherine’s life was a precious treasure. 

Jacob was still restless. Vincent pulled another song from his limited lullaby repertoire. It was a song he’d first sung for Jacob when he was nothing more than a baby. The lyrics were Byron, with a haunting melody. In truth, though it was Jacob who listened, Vincent really sang this song to Catherine. 

So we’ll go no more a’roving 

So late into the night

Though the heart be still as loving

And the moon be still as bright;

For the sword outwears its sheath,

And the soul wears out the breast

And the heart must pause to breathe,

And love itself must rest. 

Though the night be made for loving,

And the day returns too soon, 

Still we’ll go no more a’roving

By the light of the moon. 

As soon as he was certain Jacob was asleep he donned his cloak and went Above. He was too restless to stay in the tunnels, and the bright May basket beneath the portrait mocked him. At first he walked the park, but that didn’t satisfy him. He often found himself walking past Catherine’s old apartment building, and that just made him sad. So he fled to a spot he’d begun to visit regularly about a year ago. 

It was no place special. Just a place he’d liked to come increasingly in the last year, a tall building where he could look out across the dark bay, over to New Jersey. Before he had preferred watching the wild lights of New York, but now he preferred that line of blackness in the water. Or something. He felt more peaceful in this place, anyway. 

After a few hours of contemplation he grew restless. The black line of the river wasn’t so comforting tonight. Perhaps he should go see Diana. She – and whatever horrific case she was working on – could usually shock him out of feeling sorry for himself. 

Vincent found his way to Diana’s studio apartment, climbed to her roof terrace and knocked on her window. She was still awake, of course. When she was on a case she almost never slept at night, preferring the peace of the empty streets for her concentration. Diana started and shifted some papers on her table. Then she came up to the roof. "Vincent," she said, sounding a little startled. "What are you doing here?" 

"Restless," he said. "Did I interrupt a breakthrough?"

Diana shook her head. "No. Just more dead ends." She looked out over the city. "I can't see this one in my head, and I'm... well. I'm letting myself get distracted, and that's dangerous." 

"Should I look?" Vincent asked. 

Diana nodded. "Yes. I'm stuck." She returned to her loft, and Vincent followed her, silent as a cat. The first thing she did was return to her table and began stacking papers. "Come in." 

Vincent slid in gently and gazed at the board which held the salient details of the case she was working on. He tended to show up at least once a case. He knew a lot about the underworld of the city, and sometimes knew a lead that she could follow. The picture prominent on the board was a pretty, dark skinned girl of non-exclusive race, who smiled in a conservative blouse in a school portrait. "Who is she?" he asked. 

"Her name’s Alisha. Fourteen, cops say runaway, parents insist she’d never do such a thing. I’m inclined to believe the parents." She shook her head. "I’m starting to follow a lead on an amateur porn ring. If she’s with them, she’s in bad enough, but I first I need to find out if she’s somehow gotten involved in that company which is branching out into snuff films." She shook her head. "Sometimes I hate this job."

"You have a gift for it," he said quietly. 

"I know," she said. "Or a curse to it." 

Vincent gazed at her. She felt... different, somehow. More intense. He hadn’t felt this from her in a long, long time. "Something’s wrong," he said. 

Diana shook her head, refusing to look at him. "It’s nothing," she said. "I loathe these cases. Most of the time you find the girls too late."

Vincent sensed a lie, but he let it go. The role Diana had to play was a difficult one. She absorbed people, absorbed the horror they were undergoing in the hopes of finding them. She made them a part of her. He had thought his empathy sometimes made for a difficult road. Diana’s absorption of people was a constant drain on her soul. And the worst of it was, if she didn’t do it, her psyche slowly starved to death. She had confessed that she couldn’t live for long without a case to solve, another’s life to immerse herself in. She grew restless and anxious and snappish if she went without a case for more than a week. 

And it was a true immersion. When she had been on Catherine’s case he could almost smell her, almost felt the same pull he had felt when Catherine was with him. She had created a true fragment of Catherine’s spirit and held it deep inside herself. It modified her behavior, affected her emotions, opened her mind to possibilities that Diana alone would never have considered. Once she had shifted to another case that shadow pull had faded, but he still felt a sympathy. They were the same. Diana held as much magic as himself and Narcissa, something inexplicable. In many ways she would fit better with the people Below, who accepted such differences. Yet at the same time, her gift would be wasted Below. She was needed here, in the corrupt world Above. And in thanks for her work on behalf of Catherine and Jacob and himself, he would continue to help her as much as he could. 

He frowned at the many images and charts and connections on her board. This time, he thought he could help. "I know this man," he said, pointing at a seedy looking man with a red bandana around his head. "I’ve seen him in Alphabet City." 

Diana’s head shot up. "Where?" 

"Avenue Q. Two or three thousand block."

Diana ran to the board so quickly her hip bumped into the table. She pulled a marker from the bottom of the board and wrote, "Ave. Q" beside the man’s picture. For a few brief moments she rearranged strings and pulled a picture from a file that lay beside the board. Vincent knew she’d be busy for another ten minutes at least, trying to map out the connections so that she could zone in on the next place she needed to be. He backed up to give her her space, and his eye caught on one of the papers she had knocked off the table in her hurry to get to the board. 

It was a photograph which made his heart twist. He wasn’t sure why, as he didn’t recognize the image until he picked it up. He had thought, at first, it was simply the pitiful condition of the figure in the photograph. She was crumpled in a ball on the floor, her short ragged hair unkempt, her eyes wild as she stared in terror at the bright flash of the camera. But it didn’t take long for him to recognize the face. _Catherine_. It was Catherine. But Catherine in a state he had never before seen her. Hair short, eyes wild? Even in those last terrible moments on the roof as she died in his arms, she hadn’t looked so pitiful as this. 

How long he stood there staring at the image of the wretched remains of the woman he adored he did not know. Long enough for Diana to realize he had picked it up. She had the decency not to try and snatch it away, or to ask what he was doing meddling in her things. She knew she had dropped it carelessly in her eagerness to tie Avenue Q to the missing girl. She wondered if her subconscious had done it intentionally. 

Diana sighed. "Well, that’s decided that."

Vincent found his voice. "Decided what?" he asked quietly. "When was this taken?" 

Diana got a curious look on her face, and he sensed indecision. 

"Why are you looking into Catherine’s case again?" he asked. Now he understood the intensity he had felt in her before. Catherine had been resurrected in her again. "Tell me." 

Diana feared telling him the truth. "It may be nothing," was the first thing she said. "You need to understand that first. I didn’t want to keep things from you. If there was anything to tell, I’d have made sure you knew all by tomorrow night." 

"Knew all of _what_?" Vincent said. He seemed to be on the edge of a blade; one wrong move and he would fall and be cut in two. 

"Someone told Father they might have seen... Catherine... at the Maplewood Institute in New Jersey. He wanted me to check it out before they tried telling you. It might not have been her."

Vincent let his hand holding the picture drop, sorrow clouding his face. "It was not," he said evenly. "Though I can see how Father might have worried." He shook his head. "He cannot understand in his heart that I am no longer a child. Catherine died in my arms. I am not foolish enough to believe she could be resurrected." 

Diana swallowed. "There’s something you need to know. I didn’t tell you this," she said, "because by the time I met you, it no longer mattered." 

Vincent looked up at her. "Tell me what?"

"Catherine did not die in your arms." 

A horrible frisson passed through his torso at those words. No! No, what was happening here? Was this some horrible nightmare? "She did," he said, his voice deepening in a growl. "I sat vigil by her bed until dawn. I kissed her cold lips and felt no life in her flesh. Her last words were to me. Though lovers be lost, love shall not."

"And death shall have no dominion?" Diana said, surprising him. Come to think of it, she had pulled those words from nowhere when he had first met her. Where had she gotten that? "I know," Diana said. "She was alive. Barely, but alive." 

He could not take this. He surged forward and threw the table Diana had been working on against the wall, knocking down half a book shelf and breaking the frame of one of her prints. Diana stepped back. Dealing with Vincent, she decided, was not conducive to having nice furniture. If he wasn’t what he was, she’d never be friends with him. "She was _not_!" he roared. 

"Vincent, control yourself, I have neighbors," Diana hissed. 

He growled under his breath and began to pace. She was right. Through the turmoil in his heart he spared one thought on Diana’s forbearance. She felt no fear of him. Of course, she had built herself her own fragment of Catherine’s spirit; Catherine felt no fear, either. 

"I know this is hard for you," she said. "Believe me, I can imagine how hard." 

"She was _dead_ ," he growled. 

There was something here she wasn’t getting. "Why do you have to believe that?"

He stared at Diana in supplication. "Because if she was not, than I abandoned her!" he groaned. 

"It’s not your fault. Everything abandoned her, Vincent, her own breath, even her own senses. Everyone thought she was dead. The EMT injected her with narcan almost on a whim, thinking it already too late."

"Narcan?" Vincent asked. 

"Counteracts morphine," Diana said. 

Horror widened his eyes. "You mean a simple injection could have brought her back to me?" 

Diana didn’t dare say anything. Death waited less than an inch behind his eyes. 

Nausea struck him. His stomach surged and bile filled his throat. He bent over, clutching his convulsing stomach as he panted in horror. He should have taken her to a hospital and hang the risk, should have taken her to Father, to Peter, he should have looked more carefully, he should have.... 

Diana cut through the torment. "She got the injection in time, Vincent. And only because you brought her home. You saved her." 

Barely. It was cold comfort. "But she’s gone." 

"It wasn’t only that, Vincent. From what I saw of her, she may as well have died that day."

Vincent twitched. "You _saw_ her?"

"Yes. I’m afraid I did. The day I took the case. I went to see her body, but they couldn’t fool me with a replacement. They took me to see another patient. Her," she added, pointing to the now crumpled photograph in Vincent’s hand. "They were hiding her, trying to protect her, by giving her a false name. She was mad, Vincent. She frightened me. She broke my heart... and I knew I had to find justice for her. I knew I had to find you."

Horrified wonder touched Vincent’s eyes. "She _sent_ you?" he whispered. 

He was right. Diana shook her head very slightly, unwilling to admit to what had passed between Catherine and herself. It felt as intimate, in its way, as a kiss. "She may have tried to. She had no words left. Or almost no words." 

"And you did not tell me?" he whispered, his voice raw. 

"She was dead, Vincent. By the time I found you, they told me she had already passed. I wasn’t surprised. She looked half dead already when I saw her." 

Vincent’s head tilted back and he sank to the floor. "What have I done?" he whispered. His own words were fading fast. He gripped his fists so tightly that his claws drew blood from his palms. He didn’t dare move, for fear of alerting Diana’s neighbors, for fear of accidently hurting the woman who had helped him retrieve his son. The woman who had acted for Catherine when _he_ was merely couched in despair. He sank his head onto his knees. 

Diana sidled up behind him and knelt down. The part of her that was currently Catherine couldn’t leave him alone in this. Gingerly, she stroked the back of his hair. "Should I tell you what I saw?" she asked. "Or is it too much for you?"

"Every moment," Vincent murmured. 

Diana wasn’t quite sure if he meant she should proceed or not, but her conscience pricked her. She told him everything, every moment, every line that fell from Catherine's mad lips. They were all burned into her memory, and if her memory had flagged, she could have refreshed it with the poem, a copy of which was now buried under the rubble of what had once been her table. She even spoke of the relief she had felt when she heard "Aurora" had finally died. "I’d never seen anyone act like that. The doctors said it might be an acute form of postpartum depression, compounded by trauma, possible brain damage from the morphine overdose. But now... I’m thinking there was even more to it than that. I think she was trying recreate the conditions Below. Darkness, candlelight, cold. And more... those would have been the early days, when you had... just lost her. If the state of my furniture is any indication, you probably weren’t at your best. If you still shared a bond, as you told me, it is possible...." 

"She became like me," Vincent said. "Her words had fled." He looked down at his clenched hands. "And that is how she died. In darkness, alone and insane." He had thought these words a thousand times since she first disappeared, but he had never felt them as deeply as he did now. "It should have been me."

Diana hesitated before she spoke, and when she spoke, he could swear these were Catherine’s words. "It was, Vincent. You’ve died a thousand times since then. I’ve watched you die again tonight."

But this horror was only the first of the night. "You said someone thought they saw her? Alive? Is it possible?"

Diana didn’t want to raise his hopes, but she couldn’t lie to him. "It is _possible_. They assured me that the body they released was Catherine Chandler’s, but it was a closed casket funeral. Knowing the state she had been in, that didn’t surprise me, but truthfully... I never saw her corpse."

Vincent flinched at the word, and Diana wished she had used something less graphic. "Who saw her?" 

Diana shook her head. "Father didn’t tell me that. If it wasn’t her, we didn’t plan on telling you anything. If it was her, Father wanted to warn you before you tried to go to her."

" _Father_ said that," Vincent whispered, incredulous. 

"Among other things," said Diana carefully. "He worries about you." 

Vincent pulled away slightly from the hand which was stroking his hair. He did not want to be comforted, and a fragment of Catherine’s spirit was not Catherine herself. There was a time he might have let himself be comforted by it, but not when there was even the faintest glimmer of a hope of Catherine’s survival. Diana sat very still. He was very quiet. 

"I’ll let you know tomorrow," she said. "After I go to see."

Vincent stood up very quickly then. "Yes," he said. "I’ll meet you at the drainage tunnel." 

Diana wasn’t so easily fooled. Vincent had no intention of waiting through the night for someone _else_ to go and see if it was indeed Catherine at the institute. She knew full well she couldn’t begin to stop him. "Be careful," she said instead. 

"I shall," he whispered. He paused at her window. "I understand why you did not tell me before," he said. "It would likely have driven me mad, as well, when the wound was still so raw." 

"And it wouldn’t have helped anything," Diana said. "She wouldn’t have wanted that. She wouldn’t have wanted you to know she had been in that state." Vincent closed his eyes, hearing echos of himself. The tiny fragment of Catherine’s spirit which Diana had created was true as stone. Which meant she held a sliver of him, as well. "I’m still sorry." She swallowed. "If it isn’t her?" 

Vincent shook his head, afraid to hope, afraid to despair. "I go home." 

Diana stood up very slowly. "And if it is?" 

Vincent regarded her. She looked very frightened. "I don’t know." 


	3. Chapter 3

> Chapter 3
> 
> ***
> 
> Every sensible impulse in his brain told him not to believe it was her. Every moment of fighting through his grief told him that it couldn’t possibly be her, and that hoping was both futile and dangerous. His mind was adamant on this; _do not believe_. 
> 
> His heart had other plans. 
> 
> Vincent’s heart put all the pieces together. Jacob’s insistence against his mother’s death. His protestations that Vincent didn’t believe in her death either. Vincent’s desires to watch over to New Jersey. And the hope, just the wrenching, searing hope that had kindled in his heart the moment he heard. Not to mention the horror and guilt at what he had done if his Catherine _was_ still living. 
> 
> There were no tunnels where he was going, but there _was_ a train, and a dark night, and several hours until daylight. Should he have asked him, Father would have said it was too risky, far too dangerous. Vincent was tired of asking Father. 
> 
> How could he have hid this possibility from him? How long had he known? Not long, he suspected. He did not believe that Father would have hidden the _truth_ of Catherine’s survival from him. But how long might he hide the uncertain _possibility_? 
> 
> It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. All that mattered was finding Catherine again... if it was Catherine. If he couldn’t find her here tonight he would wait until he heard from Diana before checking again. After all, she might be out, or at a room without a window. It wasn’t as if he could go inside the well lit halls of the institute and ask to see the room roster. 
> 
> At each window he paused, listening with every sense at his disposal. The night was warm for the first of May, and quite a handful of people had their windows cracked. Vincent walked half way around the building before he found the room he was looking for. 
> 
> He would have known it even without having listened at other windows. It alone amongst all the darkened, sleeping rooms held the gentle glow of a flickering candle. He remembered Catherine telling him that she had once been afraid of the dark. How her mother had given her a candle to light before bed. If she was alone and – troubled– he knew she would light a candle to keep the dark away. 
> 
> Catherine, his light. His heart hurt to even think it might possibly be her. _It is not her!_ shouted the sensible portion of his mind. The beast in him growled, and that stopped that nonsense. He would _see_ if it was her. 
> 
> _And if it is not her,_ said the sensible portion, _you must not follow her into madness. Jacob needs you._
> 
> This time he let it talk. 
> 
> The lightly flickering room was on the second floor. He climbed the brick facade, trying not to think of all the times he had climbed down to Catherine’s balcony from the roof of her apartment building. As he neared the window he heard music... a radio, he realized. Classical music. Hope stirred in him again. Who else in this place would keep both candles and music playing through the night? He couldn’t bring himself to quash his hope again. Steeling himself for the moment when it would be dashed, Vincent perched himself on the window ledge and regarded the figure in the bed. 
> 
> He felt as if he had just been stabbed. The tiny creature who lay curled in the rough blanket and stiff white sheets was clad in a threadbare sweater and an institutional nightgown, not in lace and satin. Her hair was close cropped and dull, not a full golden brown luster carefully and fashionably maintained. Her flesh was sallow and lined, not rosy and fresh with promise. And it was his Catherine for all of that. 
> 
> For a long time he stood in the window, afraid to stir or breathe, terrified of shattering this most fragile of dreams. He searched for her through the peculiar sixth sense of what had been their bond, but felt the same _nothing_ that had plagued him since his illness; only the distant peacefulness of his sleeping son, with whom he was also always linked, if less strongly than he had once been with Catherine. _Their_ son. This was Catherine. Catherine! 
> 
> The blood hummed in his veins. The window was slightly opened. He could smell her, now. Her scent was sickly and tainted, but it  _was_ her! He couldn’t bear it. He opened the window further. 
> 
> The gentle sound of wood against wood caused the figure in the bed to start. Trauma had made her senses more acute than they had once been. Green eyes milky with sleep fluttered open and focused on the candles. Then they flickered to the dark figure that stood illuminated in their dim light. 
> 
> For one second their eyes locked. Vincent felt the world hold its breath, and his hand reached for her of its own accord. Then Catherine sat upright in bed, her eyes wild. "No!" she whispered. 
> 
> "Catherine," he called, intending to tell her it was indeed him. He had come for her, at last. 
> 
> Catherine’s mouth opened in a terrified scream, piercing through the halls of the institute, and lacerating his heart. He staggered back toward the window in confusion, part of him looking for an enemy, the other part already knowing that the enemy was him. Catherine continued to scream, the sounds echoing through the open window to the outside air, causing further echos to come from the halls as the nurse on duty rushed to the sound of distress. 
> 
> Vincent was only just able to find the window, and he fell out of it, down ten feet to the hard ground, flat on his back. A light was flicked on above his head as he lay gazing upward, fully exposed, his hood having come off in the fall. His breath was gone. He didn’t know if it was from the fall or the shock. Voices came from Catherine’s room, soothing voices that finally brought an end to her screams. Words came to him, as the wordless heart of him was stunned almost to death. _You are my world_ , he thought, _beloved, eternal, forever. Catherine,_ Catherine! _Forgive me! My soul is yours, my life is yours. I beg you, on my knees I would beg you..._
> 
> In the back of his mind an awareness joined his. Jacob was joined to him as he was joined to Jacob. The child had awoken at the turmoil in his heart, and was frightened. 
> 
> His life was not his own. His life was not Catherine’s, either. It was Jacob’s. Responsibility quashed both his heart and his mind, let them wander in circles aimlessly inside him, and forced him to his feet. By the time anyone thought to close the window, Vincent had disappeared into the darkness. 
> 
> ***
> 
> It was late morning by the time Vincent made it to the central hub. Many were waiting for him, ready to ask him where he had been, as he rarely stayed away so long without taking Jacob with him. Vincent’s days of wandering the lower tunnels for weeks were over. His mercurial habit of disappearing for days at a time was quelled by his responsibility to his son, who needed routine and stability. And each questioning face, when it saw Vincent’s, retreated to work without daring to open its mouth. 
> 
> Vincent walked right through the tunnels without meeting anyone’s eyes. He followed common sense and his link and entered the creche, where Jacob was quietly building a tower out of wooden blocks. He looked up as Vincent entered the room, and Vincent could see the boy had been crying. 
> 
> Without a word he picked the child up from under Mary’s gaze and walked off, cradling him against his chest. Jacob buried his face in his father’s hair and held him very tightly. Vincent walked to the cavern of whispers and found a spot on the board walk where he could sit against the wall. He sank to the boards and let the whispers drown out the voices and the groans in his head, let his son’s scent bury the waves of crushing emptiness that threatened to drown his soul. 
> 
> Jacob sensed that whatever was wrong with his father was too strong for words. He hadn’t slept much, tormented with nightmares, and when he had finally awoken all was still dark, and his father wasn’t there. He’d run to find his GrandFather, but GrandFather seemed troubled, too. Now, his father holding him securely in his arms once again, he was willing to put up with anything, even an uncomfortable silent embrace in the whispering caverns. He endured for an hour, barely struggling, and then drifted off to sleep. 
> 
> Finally, exhausted in heart, soul and body, Vincent rested his head on his son’s sleeping shoulder and... did not sleep. What he endured that day was nothing so peaceful and healing as sleep. But he did lose consciousness, and time in fact passed. 

***


	4. Chapter 4

> Chapter 4
> 
> ***
> 
> Diana flashed her badge to this new official. "As I explained to the lady at the desk, I am _here_ to see Charlotte Bakster." 
> 
> The woman’s brows twitched under her greying brown hair. "And you are?" 
> 
> "Detective Diana Bennet, New York police. Who are you?"
> 
> "I am Charlotte’s physician," said the woman. "Dr. Muriel Malachy. Could we talk in my office?"
> 
> Diana stood her ground. "Unless Charlotte is in your office, I have no interest in going there." 
> 
> "Please Detective Bennet," said the doctor, and turned without furthering her explanation. 
> 
> Diana followed the narrow white coat into one of three offices on the ground floor. The moment she entered the office she knew that Dr. Malachy was in fact a psychiatrist, and not a general practitioner. This institute was interesting. Most of the patients were voluntary and there were no locks on the doors. The grounds had a guard at the gate, but this would only stop dottering, confused inmates, not anyone determined to escape. Most of the people she had passed were mentally disabled, simple or retarded, not violent, but incapable of caring for themselves on their own. It was apparently a private and not a state run institution, but many of the inmates also merited state support. Catherine Chandler, should she be there, would have been one of these. 
> 
> "May I ask why you want to see Ms. Bakster?"
> 
> "I’m afraid that’s a personal matter," Diana said deftly. 
> 
> Dr. Malachy frowned. "I am Ms. Bakster’s attending physician, and we have her wishes to take into account."
> 
> Diana raised an eyebrow. "She has requested no visitors?"
> 
> "Yes," the doctor said. "None of the usual compassion rounds, no one with animals or balloons or harps. She has been very adamant about this. She has an understandable paranoia about the world outside, and we have been accommodating to her in this request."
> 
> "But I am not a compassion round," said Diana. "Has she refused personal visitors?"
> 
> Here Dr. Malachy hesitated. "It has never before been an issue. I have been under the impression that she had neither friends nor family."
> 
> Diana was no fool. She played a card, presuming that the woman _was_ Catherine Chandler. "You say she has an ‘understandable’ paranoia. Am I to understand that you know something of her true history?"
> 
> Dr. Malachy blinked at her. "Am I to understand that you do?" 
> 
> "Quite a lot. I can’t tell you any more," Diana said, "unless I know how much you are aware of." 
> 
> Dr. Malachy hesitated, and finally said, "I know what she has told me of her history. I have no record of her previous identity." She raised an eyebrow, clearly expecting reciprocation. 
> 
> Diana suppressed a grin at her victory. So Charlotte _was_ a pseudonym. "I was instrumental in solving her case," Diana said. "And there are questions I need to ask her."
> 
> "Is there a reason?"
> 
> "A very good one," Diana said. 
> 
> Dr. Malachy bent closer to her. "Please tell me this has something to do with her child. Was it found?"
> 
> Diana was taken aback. "You know about the child?"
> 
> " _She_ has told me of a child that was taken from her just at the moment of the attempt on her life," Dr. Malachy said. "Charlotte has spoken of it frequently. It is the one aspect of her true life which seems to hold any meaning for her. I doubt she is capable of custody at this time, but if she were to be reunited with this child, even through distant means, photographs or letters, it might shatter her out of this..." Dr. Malachy seemed to change the word she was going to say. "Out of the depression she suffers from."
> 
> Diana wasn’t sure how much she should say. "I believe I do have a lead on the possible whereabouts of the child. But I need to ask her some questions before I could be sure." 
> 
> Dr. Malachy sighed and leaned back in her chair. "You’ve chosen a bad day," she said at last. "Charlotte had an episode last night which has left her in a troubled state. It might be better to come back in a week or so, particularly with the news you seem to be carrying." Her eyes suddenly focused on Diana, particularly her hair. "When did you first take on this case? Have you met Charlotte before?"
> 
> "Once," Diana said. "A long time ago. She was not well when I saw her."
> 
> Dr. Malachy shook her head. "No, she was not. I think she remembers you. She mentioned someone similar to you in her journal."
> 
> That surprised her. That Catherine Chandler had been in position to remember anything at all was chilling. How aware had she been through her madness? 
> 
> "I think I will take you to see her. But I must remain as witness, and will be privy to all of your interactions."
> 
> Diana tried not to show her annoyance. This was going to make the conversation exceedingly difficult. So long as she got to see the woman, she would put up with anything. "Very well."
> 
> They proceeded up the elevator and down a corridor to a closed door. Dr. Malachy knocked on the door before opening it to reveal a tiny woman sitting curled up on her bed in the tightest possible ball. "Charlotte?" Dr. Malachy said. "I have a visitor for you."
> 
> "No visitors," said the figure on the bed listlessly. Diana couldn’t see her face. 
> 
> "Ms. Bakster," Diana said gently, "I am Diana Bennet of the New York Police Department." She held up her badge. "I needed to speak with you."
> 
> The wasted figure looked up at Diana and blinked at her with red eyes. "I know you..." she whispered. 
> 
> "Yes," Diana said. She was feeling unexpectedly choked up. This _was_ Catherine Chandler, and she was sane... or at least sane enough. "I visited you some years ago. In the hospital."
> 
> "I remember you," she said. Her brow furrowed. "Joe sent you, didn’t he?"
> 
> "Yes. He put me onto your case."
> 
> Unexpectedly, the woman burst into tears. She looked away shaking her head and reached for an almost empty box of tissue that sat beside her on the bed. Diana noticed she floated in little sea of crumpled tissues. She dried her eyes, sniffed a few times, and tried to compose herself. "Sorry," she said. "I’m crazy, you know. Little things affect me." She rubbed her forehead as if trying to put her mind back where it belonged. "I had a relapse last night. Funny you should come today."
> 
> "A relapse?" Diana said. She found she was sitting on the edge of Catherine’s bed like an old friend, and wasn’t sure when she’d done that. It felt very natural to be with Catherine, as if they were on the most intimate terms. Diana had felt that before, with victims she had identified with, but it was even worse with Catherine. "How bad was it?"
> 
> Catherine glanced at her. "Oh, sorry. The last time you saw me there wasn’t much left. No, I... I was just seeing things." She looked at Diana. "I remember you," she said. "I remember when you came to see me. I tried to talk to you, but I... couldn’t." She frowned. "Why are you here?"
> 
> Dr. Malachy stepped forward. "Detective Bennet thinks she might have found a lead to your child," she said. 
> 
> A stricken look of terrified hope smoothed out the lines on Catherine’s forehead. "Did he live?" she whispered. 
> 
> Diana hadn’t meant to be the one to tell her all this. But she couldn’t bear the torture in Catherine’s eyes. "Yes," she said. "He’s safe."
> 
> Catherine closed her eyes and gasped in relief. "Can I see him?" she pleaded. 
> 
> Dr. Malachy shook her head. "I think that might be unwise at this point in your recovery, Charlotte. You remember only last night you had quite an episode."
> 
> Diana frowned. "What kind of episode?" she asked both of them. 
> 
> "I have fantasies," Catherine said. "Hallucinations. I thought I was getting better, it frightened me."
> 
> "Hallucinations?" Diana asked. 
> 
> Catherine sank down on the bed. "Dr. Malachy, please," she said, waving toward her psychiatrist. "Clear this up? I don’t feel like explaining how crazy I am myself."
> 
> "Are you sure?" the doctor asked. 
> 
> "She should know," Catherine said, turning toward the window. 
> 
> "Charlotte underwent severe trauma, as you know. To keep herself sane she invented histories, stories, to keep her company in her confinement. Particularly a... protector... a personification of her own strength, which came to her again in a dream last night."
> 
> "It wasn’t a dream," Catherine said, sounding annoyed. "I’ve dreamed of Vincent a thousand times, I know what a dream is. I was  _awake_. Which means I’m going crazy." 
> 
> Dr. Malachy said in a patient voice, "The first few minutes of consciousness can still maintain a dream state. I wouldn’t be so worried about suffering a true relapse." 
> 
> Diana looked down at the back of Catherine’s head. "You saw him last night?" she whispered. "What did you do?"
> 
> "Charlotte was quite frightened, but we were able to calm her down," Dr. Malachy said. "I think it might be best if you leave now. You can speak to her again some other day, when things are going better, perhaps when you have something more concrete to tell us."
> 
> "What did you do when you saw him?" Diana persisted. 
> 
> Catherine turned in the bed and looked up at her. "What would you do if you realized you were on the path back to that dark room you saw me in? I screamed." 
> 
> Diana was horrified. With Dr. Malachy hovering over her, she couldn’t tell the truth. She didn’t even dare mention Vincent’s name. Clearly Dr. Malachy knew all, she only believed it to be the fantasies of a madwoman. But if Catherine had screamed upon seeing Vincent’s face, Diana had to get back as quickly as possible to prevent _him_ from going mad! She had to stop this, though. "You know," she said. "I’m no psychiatrist... but if this ‘protector’ is a personification of your strength, maybe you need to talk to him... reclaim it, in order to make yourself fully sane again." She shrugged. "Just my opinion."
> 
> Catherine looked at her as if seeing the dawn. 
> 
> Diana gently touched her shoulder and smiled. "Hang in there. I think everything will start going well for you, very soon. Be well, Catherine."
> 
> The woman in the bed flinched at the name. "Thank you," she whispered.
> 
> Diana fled back to New York as fast as humanly possible. She feared she might be too late to stop a dreadful calamity. 

***

"He doesn’t want to see you," Father said at the threshold of the drainage ditch entrance. "He’s made that quite clear." He took a step toward Diana. "Did you tell him? Can you imagine the kind of state he is in? He hasn’t spoken a word since he returned. _Jacob_ is speaking for him, saying what he wants, or trying to, as well as he can. I warned you that it was too dangerous to risk hurting him in this way. What were you thinking!"

"He’s not a child, sir," Diana said. "And it is imperative that I speak with him, _personally_." 

"No," Father said. 

"You know perfectly well I’m the only person he’ll listen to."

Father heaved an exasperated sigh. "Very well." He stepped aside and allowed Diana access to the tunnels. "But only because you can hardly make things worse." He walked along beside her and couldn’t help asking, "Was it her?"

"Yes," Diana said tersely. 

Father closed his eyes. He could only imagine the kind of state she was in if Vincent was acting the way he was. "How bad is she?"

"Surprisingly well, in fact," Diana said. Catherine hadn’t seemed insane at all really, not in the least. Merely ill-informed and disillusioned. She clearly suffered from PTSD, but that was manageable. It was an ailment most of the people Below suffered from, and the reason why they had abandoned society in the first place. The man walking beside her, for example, had quite a ripe case of it. Hence his paranoia. 

"Then what is wrong with him?" Father asked. 

"I think I can guess," Diana said. "And it will be all right. Just give me a few moments alone with him to explain."

"Very well," Father said. As he stopped outside Vincent’s chambers he said, "Please, help him."

"I will. Will you come in? I think you should take the boy for awhile."

Father nodded, and they came in together. 

Vincent sat in his chair, still in his cloak, his fist clenched around the leather bag that held his rose. His eyes were fixed on his son. Jacob was sitting on the floor looking through a stack of brightly colored picture books. He finished the stack, reached underneath it, and began leafing through them again. He looked up as Diana and Father entered. "He wants you to go ‘way."

"I know that, Jacob," Father said. "But Diana would like to speak with him."

"We don’ want to," Jacob said. 

Father strode forward and took young Jacob by the hand. "What do you say, you and I go off to the kitchens and see if we can get Vincent some herb tea? I think I smelled hot chocolate brewing as I passed by there."

Jacob looked torn. "Father doesn’ want me to go."

Diana knelt down before the boy. "You go and get your hot cocoa, and when you come back, your father will be feeling lots better, okay?"

Jacob looked over at her. "Really?" His eyes filled with unshed tears. 

"Really."

He looked from his father’s stony face to his GrandFather’s concerned one, and finally nodded. He was led away by Father, sniffing. 

Vincent growled softly the moment the boy was out of sight. 

Diana knew beating around the bush was far too dangerous at this stage. "She remembers you, and she still loves you," she said. 

Vincent surged up, knocking over his chair. "Impossible!" he said, starting to pace. "I frightened her. A monster. Arrgh!" He swept a pile of books off one of his side tables with a snarl. "She’s better off without me!" 

"She’s in an insane asylum, Vincent," Diana said. "How can you believe that?"

"She can’t remember me," he growled. "I must have seemed like a demon from the night come to plague her."

"Well, you did," Diana said frankly, "but it wasn’t you she was frightened of. It’s herself."

He looked at her properly then. Some of her confidence must have shown in her face because his blue eyes lost some of their wildness. "Herself?"

"She’s gotten into the hands of some psychiatrist who told her she invented you. And all the world Below, I suspect. I couldn’t get a moment to speak with her alone, and since this woman knows everything I couldn’t even drop any hints without giving the game away." 

"This doctor knows everything?" Vincent whispered, horrified. 

"She doesn’t believe it’s real," Diana reassured him. "But it does mean we can’t let even a hint of this place get to her. If she finds one person is real, she might leap to the conclusion that the rest are." Diana carefully set his chair upright. "When Catherine saw you, she thought she was going mad again. That’s the _only_ reason she screamed. She remembers you, apparently thinks of you all the time. Dreams about you." 

"She dreams of me," Vincent said, closing his eyes. It was as if a bright summer wind had just blown through the tunnels of his heart, clearing out all the cobwebs and shadows. _She loves me!_ He almost laughed with the relief of it. Catherine! Catherine was alive! She lived, and she loved him! He realized all was not well, but he could hardly bring himself down to earth to ask Diana, "But she doesn’t believe I exist?"

"Yes," Diana said. "Which is... troublesome, but not insurmountable. I managed to convince her to speak with you if you went to her again. I don’t think she’ll scream. But she thinks of you as a personification of her own strength, so be careful what you say until she believes." 

"I need to know everything she said," Vincent said with feeling, and Diana sighed with relief. She had never seen this kind of happiness dance in Vincent’s eyes. He seemed an entirely different person. Before she could speak a gentle pattering of feet interrupted them. 

"Father!" Jacob said, running alone into the room. His GrandFather was puffing down the corridor far behind him. "Father, Father!" 

Vincent picked the boy up and spun him around, grinning like a Cheshire cat. "Your Mommy’s coming home, Jacob," Vincent whispered to him. "You were right."

"Mommy?" shrieked the boy. "When, when?"

Vincent shook his head, smothering a laugh. "I’m not sure yet, but soon. Very soon." He kissed the boy’s cheek and they hugged each other fiercely. "You were right!" 

***


	5. Chapter 5

> Chapter 5
> 
> ***
> 
> Journal of Charlotte Bakster
> 
> May 2nd
> 
> I’m going mad again. I saw Vincent in a vision last night, and it was neither dream nor imagining. I _saw_ him, heard him, caught his scent, which means full, all out, multi-sense hallucination. I don’t understand. Did I call him out of my psyche with the message I wrote yesterday? 
> 
> The thing that really scares me is, I’d rather be mad and see him than sane and not. And the truth of that terrified me. 
> 
> By interesting coincidence, I saw that red headed woman again. Her name is Diana Bennet, and she thinks she might know where my child is. If that’s the case, I need my strength. I don’t know why I trust that woman so. Why do I feel as if she’s a long lost sister, someone who knows my soul as well as I do? I can’t explain it. I suppose it’s inexplicable. Perhaps it’s the air of confidence she has. 
> 
> She says that maybe I need to talk to my strength, to Vincent, in order to own it again, become fully sane. If my consciousness conjures him up again, I think I’m going to try that. Screaming the hallucination away hasn’t made me feel any better. Let’s see what indulging it does. 

 

*** 

She was in a dreamless sleep when something – a presence – awoke her. She was almost expecting to see the dark figure that stood by the window. Tonight his hood was up, and he stood very still. She took in a deep breath. "It’s you," she whispered. 

"Yes," he said. Oh, his voice! It was so familiar, so comforting. "I’m sorry to have frightened you last night."

She grimaced, her brow furrowing. "It wasn’t you."

"So I understand," Vincent said. He was at a loss for what to say. His usual mild empathic sense was useless. The Bond they had once shared was broken, but more, his empathy was blind to the woman in the bed. Usually he knew exactly what needed to be said, to anyone. Now he felt like an actor performing Shakespeare without a script. There were old plays he could draw on, but the lines for this scene were missing. "Would you like for me to go?" he asked. 

She sat up a bit. "I can do that?"

"At your word, I am banished forever," he said evenly. 

She swallowed. "You’re a very accommodating manifestation of madness." 

He couldn’t help it. He took a step toward her. "I am not your madness, Catherine."

She closed her eyes at the name. "I haven’t heard that name in years."

"My heart has uttered it every moment of every day." 

Her eyes searched for his in the candle light. "Lower your hood," she asked. She wanted to see him, see him properly. He hesitated, and then did so, revealing the golden mane, the unique face. She measured him for long moments. Then she smiled. "Yes," she whispered. "That is what I longed for. Vincent." 

The sound of his name drew him another step forward. She looked so pitiful, pale and weak and weary. It was all he could do to keep from catching her up in his arms. But that would frighten her, and he could never risk that. 

She licked her lips. "I miss you so."

"I miss you."

She looked away for a moment, torn. "Why are you here?" she asked. "Why? Did I call you from the depths of my mind? Why now?"

Vincent shook his head. "I can’t explain why," he said. "Not yet. In time you will come to understand all of it. In the meantime, I am here for you. Always."

"Then I _am_ mad."

"You are frightened of that thought."

"I’m afraid of falling backwards," she said. "Of being unable to separate fantasy from reality, of losing myself. I’m afraid to be the creature I was after They were finished with me." She shook her head. "But Diana... a woman I met today."

"I know Diana," he said. 

She looked confused, but then her faced cleared. "Of course you do. You know all I want you to know. You know everything I’m feeling."

"No," he said, though it hurt his heart to admit it. "I do not. I wish I still could. But you are gone from me. More, even a blind spot in my senses. It pains me. But I know Diana." 

She swallowed. "Diana said I should talk to you. That perhaps I’m coming out of my madness, and that is why you’ve returned. So that I can regain own my own strength."

"I am not your strength, Catherine," he said. "You are your own strength." 

She shook her head. "Then I have no strength left at all."

"You are stronger than I will ever be," Vincent said. "It is only you which has shown me the meaning of the word."

She looked down. "I’m not strong. I hide here in this empty, structured world because I can’t bear the life outside. I can’t bear to look on the people and imagine the darkness in their souls. Even the daylight frightens me. I fear this life. I loathe it. As much as I loathe this place."

"Then why have you not tried to find a way out of it?" Vincent asked. 

"To kill myself?" 

Vincent had meant to end the life in the institute, to take control again and face the world Above, but he supposed her question was legitimate as well. 

"It takes more passion to end a life than I have," she said. "It takes conviction. There’s nothing strong enough left in me to even make that decision." 

"I’m glad," he said. "Not that you are unhappy. But that you could endure, until I could find you again." 

There was something in his voice. "Have you been searching for me?"

Guilt crushed him. "I’ve held you in my heart," he said. "I searched for you in my dreams and memories, followed your shade through a thousand dark tunnels. But I truly believed you were no longer in this world. If I had thought for one second that you were, there is nothing, _nothing_ that would have kept me from your side. I would have traveled the world, risked all, suffered any pain to find you." 

Catherine smiled. "That’s the kind of thing I always imagined you’d say," she said. "How lonely I must have been to have conjured such profound love. Nothing realistic, only so powerful it was dangerous."

"You were not lonely when I knew you, Catherine. You had hope and friends and a life in the light. You ended _my_ aloneness, Catherine. You did not need me to end yours."

Catherine’s brow furrowed. "I’m alone now," she whispered. "I’ve been alone so long."

"I’m with you."

She shook her head. "The dream of you is not strong enough, Vincent. Not strong enough to hold me together enough to face this world. I imagined it was, once, after I met you. I think. I’m not sure when I created you, when my memories became corrupted..." 

"Think of them as true, Catherine," he said. "To ease your confusion. It will make things simpler." 

She took a breath to steel herself. "That’s dangerous territory."

"Our lives have been lived on danger. You can only survive in the mind you have. To create a false truth at the request of another may make things simpler, but it does not make them true."

"I know you can’t understand," Catherine said. "You are what you are, so you couldn’t begin to accept that you are the falsehood."

"I am true in your mind, am I not?" he asked. "I believe I understand you better than any, even as we stand today. For whatever reason, I am the truth you need to hold. Don’t reject it, or you shall only remain lost!" 

Catherine buried her face in her hand. "I’d like to believe you."

"Then indulge," he said. "Just for tonight, believe whatever you want to believe." 

She stared up at him. "I believe I love you," she said. 

He had to go to her. He crossed the room and almost touched her face, but he didn’t dare. This fragile dreamworld she lived in could be shattered, and she would be frightened again. He pulled his hand back. Instead he bent low, kneeling close by her bedside, until her breath caressed his cheek, and he could feel the heat of her across those few scant inches. But he did not touch her. "I believe I love you, too," he whispered. 

The moment hung between them, glowing, and then was dashed to pieces as the sound of voices passed in the hall. The nurse on duty poked her head in the door, checking on the patient who had suffered such a difficult night the day before. She was surprised to see the patient awake. "Everything okay in here?" she asked. 

"Yes," said Charlotte quietly, banishing remorse. When she looked back toward the open window, Vincent, of course, had never been there. 

***

"This is too dangerous," Father said as Vincent again trudged himself in long after daybreak. "There has to be another way."

"There is no other way, Father."

"Someone else can assume the risk," Father said. "Diana, or \- or Peter. Surely someone who lives Above can go to her safely." 

"No one has a chance of reaching her but me," Vincent said. "Surely, in your heart even _you_ know that." 

"I know that your son is asking for you, and I cannot tell him you will surely return." 

"I am back below the city by daylight, Father," Vincent said, exasperated as he felt as a teenager, when Father had chastised him for merely walking the park. "It only takes this long to travel the tunnels between here and there. Try to understand. None but I have a chance of breaking through the hard walls of ‘impossible’ which common sense has built around her."

Father hated himself for saying this, but someone had to. "Is it best that those walls are shattered, Vincent?"

Vincent snarled, not entirely surprising his Father. "She is in _prison_ Father! A prison of her own choosing. The world Above has betrayed her, battered her beyond recognition! She has already rejected it, hiding in shadows, in a cold, impersonal cell, in memories of our possibility. How can you believe it best that she remain in a coffin, awaiting her death?" 

Father smiled, reassured. "Of course," he said. When it came to Catherine, Vincent knew best. All his warnings and roadblocks, all his cautions and cares came about partially as a test of Vincent’s feelings. If he could not weather Father’s cautions, he could never weather the reality. 

"We have never taken a member into our community who needed this place more, Father. Even if it were not Catherine, if it were a stranger in her position, you would be compelled to draw her here. How could you say such a thing to me?"

"So that you could reassure me," Father said. "Nothing more. I know I cannot stand in your way where she is concerned. I only worry."

Vincent took a deep breath. "Where is Jacob?"

"Awaiting you in your chambers. He would not join Mary and the others. Lena is with him."

Lena was sitting in a chair, watching Jacob and Baby Cathy playing on the floor, Jacob with the toy elephant which had once been Vincent’s, Baby Cathy with a much battered and recycled porcelain doll, which had seen its way through at least ten children Below. Baby Cathy was nearly a year older than Jacob, but Jacob seemed the elder of the two. Jacob lifted his head as Vincent came in. "Father!" 

Vincent picked the boy up and kissed him. 

"You saw Mommy?" 

"Yes," Vincent said. 

"When she coming?" 

Vincent shook his head. "As soon as she can, Jacob." He set the boy on the floor and nodded at Lena. "Thank you."

"Don’t mention," Lena said. "How’s she doing?"

Vincent took a deep breath. "Not well," he said. "She’s frightened. Hopeless."

Lena frowned. "I wish there was some way I could help her. As she helped me."

"You are," he said. "Thank you for watching Jacob."

"He’s too antsy to play in the creche. He’s better here." Lena took a deep breath. "You know, when she died, my heart broke. I felt as if I’d lost my sister."

"Many felt that way," Vincent said. Even the mention brought a darkness back into his soul. Catherine might be alive, but he had traveled through a hell of grief, and that journey was not going to wash away from him in a night. Or ever. He sat down heavily. 

"I was thinking...," Lena said. "One of the ways which made it possible for me to come back here, after I left... she asked me, like, what happened. I was able to tell her all of it. And she like understood, because... she felt the same way. About you, about everything." Lena shook her head. "Catherine doesn’t have that. She doesn’t have anyone really _listening_. All she has is doctors who tell her she’s crazy. Believe me, I’ve been in psych wards, they aren’t very nurturing. Maybe if you ask her about what happened to her, she can, like, purge the poison of it all." She shrugged. "Just an idea. I’m not like you, you’re probably way better at this than I am."

Vincent regarded her. "No," he said, resting his forehead on one finger. "I am at a loss. And you have your gifts too, Lena. You may well be right."

Lena swallowed. "Can I say something? There was a little part of me, when I heard what happened to her... I wasn’t glad or anything, but I kind of thought, maybe, after a lot of years went by, maybe you could see someone else, maybe even me. I liked that idea. I still love you. But... I’m so damned happy she’s okay. Happier even than I would be if you’d, like, fallen at my feet or something." She shrugged. "I just wanted you to know that." 

Vincent grunted half a laugh. He looked up at her, his face half shadowed by his hand. "I do love you, Lena," he said, trusting her to know what he meant. 

She did. "Thanks," she said, only a trifle ruefully. She scooped up Baby Cathy and turned to Jacob. "Your daddy needs some sleep, Jacob, so he can try and bring your mama back. You ready to go to Mary now?"

Jacob frowned. "I guess," he said. He gave Vincent a kiss before he left with the young woman. 

Vincent sat and thought for a few moments before seeking his bed. Lena had pointed something out to him. A great deal had happened in the time they had been apart, hardships, horrors, possibilities. In order for them to be together again, to have a chance at reconstituting their Bond, or even shoring up their dream of a life together, there was much which had to be shared. 

***

Charlotte didn’t even go to sleep that night. When he came to her window, she was awake, waiting for him. "Catherine," he whispered. 

Her breath caught. "I thought... maybe you wouldn’t come if I didn’t sleep."

He swallowed, nervous. "Is that why you haven’t slept?"

"No," she said. "That’s why I tried to sleep. I just couldn’t."

He smiled, pleased. 

"I’m glad you came back," she whispered. "Even if it means I’m completely mad." 

"Don’t think that way," he said gently. 

"You disappeared last night," she said. "I couldn’t think why."

She really thought she was talking to a hallucination, whom none could see but herself. "It doesn’t matter why," he said. He leaned against the wall and watched her. She was sitting straight, and her eyes were brighter than they had been. "How are you feeling?"

"Better, surprisingly. I’ve been... distant and unhappy. Things seem... more real, somehow. My vision is clearer, scents more sharp." She shook her head. "Maybe Diana is right. Maybe I am getting better, despite... well, _you_." 

"Or because?" he asked, almost amused. 

"Well, _I_ might think that, but don’t say that to Dr. Malachy." 

"Is she kind to you?" Vincent asked. "Trust you?"

"I don’t know," Catherine said. "It’s not her job to trust me, it’s her job to heal me." 

"Does she care about you?" 

"I _think_ so," she said. "She tries, anyway." 

They stared at each other for a long moment. Neither of them really wanted to discuss Dr. Malachy. Vincent steeled himself. "I wanted to ask you about something," he said. "It might be hard to say."

Catherine licked her lips. "What?" she asked in a tiny voice. 

"I know so much of your life," he said. "I knew your heart, you opened your world to me. But then I was severed from you. I know what torments I suffered while you were gone. I do not know what happened to you, when you were taken." 

She swallowed. "When I was busy inventing you and the world Below, you mean?" Catherine asked. 

"When you were alone," Vincent corrected, without denying her statement. 

Catherine shook her head. " _So_ alone. You don’t want to hear this, Vincent. It’ll only hurt you, make you angry."

"I’ve passed through my anger," Vincent said. "Burned through my grief. I endured. One day I will tell you of it. The journey was long and harsh. But to become a part of you again, I need to know yours. Can you bring yourself to tell me?" 

"If you can hear it, I can tell it," she said. 

"Tell me." 

She took a deep breath. "It wasn’t the Spanish Inquisition, but... in some ways it was worse. I was alone, completely solitary the entire time. They would not speak to me. I was taken once every few days to a room... a bright room... where They would strap me down and... put things in me. All with medical precision, but it was so... cold. I was a _thing_ to Them, not even a patient, just... some beast They had to monitor. And all I had was my aloneness and my hatred for Them and this tiny..." she half sobbed, "tiny life I could feel growing inside me, that I knew I wasn’t able to protect from Them. I knew They would take him, and I wouldn’t be able to stop Them. So I thought of you."

Vincent regarded her. "Of me?"

"All the time. Every second of every day. I lived through our life together. What it was to hold you for the first time, the relief I felt when you came to my balcony, how it felt to have you watch over me as I slept, how my heart leapt every time you even touched my hand. I wasn’t alone in these thoughts. I was never alone."

"I’m glad I could be there for you," Vincent said, his heart aching. He would have given so much to have been there through her pregnancy, to have rubbed the swelling from her ankles, to massage the tension from her neck, to kiss her when she felt overwhelmed. Instead all she had was an empty room and her memories. At least he had been there in them. 

"And then They took him," Catherine continued, "and the pain was over. I was floating and still and I saw you there. On the roof."

"Yes." Vincent’s voice was hoarse. He wasn’t sure he could relive this even with the knowledge that she was here with him, right now. 

"It was so beautiful, Vincent," she said. "How you held me through it, the sound of your voice. And I wasn’t afraid anymore." 

Vincent gazed at her. He hadn’t been able to see the beauty through the agony. Now that she mentioned it, it was tragic and sad and beautiful. "You weren’t?" 

"No," she said. "I wish I had died then, in your arms, with your tears on my face. It would have been the perfect ending to my life. I wouldn’t have asked for anything better. It was heaven."

"Or the sweetest portion of hell," Vincent whispered. 

Catherine smiled wistfully, and then her face darkened. "Instead I woke to pain and terror and madness and grief," she said. "Nothing so easy as death." 

"I should have been with you."

"You were too much with me," Catherine said. "You engulfed me. I couldn’t find myself. You came to protect me from it all, surged up through me and gave me a place to hide behind you. I had three tools left in my hands. You, the world Below, and those words... those words... And death shall have no dominion. All else was broken and wounded, gasping out my little life behind those three legs that counted as my only stability." 

"I had only the memory of your love," Vincent said, forgetting he was supposed to be playing a part. "And the hope of Jacob. And the chance for _revenge_. The last nearly consumed me. If you had not told me of Jacob I would have died, let the Other take me until I was raw flesh, shattered on the rocks. But I had to live for our son. And oh, Catherine, he is worth it. Worth every moment. Worth any pain, any risk! Would you could have seen him grow!" 

She was staring at him, her eyes wide. "Jacob?" she whispered. "The child is with you?" She began to cry silently. 

He wished he knew why she was crying. It was _agony_ being blind to her feelings! "Why do you cry?" he asked, desperate. 

"Then he is dead," she whispered. 

Vincent broke. He went to her, smoothed the tears from her cheeks with his strong golden hands, held her face tenderly. "No, no, Catherine! He lives! He lives with us, Below, and is loved and cherished by all!"

Catherine tensed under his hands, willing herself not to feel it, unwilling to push it away. "Below is a world that only exists in me," she gasped. "If he lives there, he only lives in me!"

He pulled her toward him. "Catherine!" he whispered, less than an inch from her face. "You must have faith in yourself! Your heart knows the truth."

She shook her head, cradled in his palms. "I fear the truth. If I embrace one truth, I’ll never see you again! But if I follow the lie, I have lost all, and will descend again into that wordless blackness!" 

"Your – mind – is – whole," Vincent said, punctuating every word. "Your soul was wounded from what they had done to you, and needed to rest. It rested behind wordlessness and violence, and it _is_ a terrible, dark place. I _know_. But you _must_ have faith. Put your trust in yourself." Her breath was intermingling with his, and he felt as if gravity’s pull had changed. The earth’s pull was light on his body compared to the weight of her breath, drawing him into her. "Put your trust in me." 

Their lips met, and their worlds collided. A sea of grief met an ocean of terror, and they crashed together with the force of a hurricane. For one moment they both stood stunned by it, the sudden relief of feeling whole for the first time in more than two years. Then the seas eddied and swirled, the crashing of a thousand surfs, and Catherine gripped him as if she would break him in two. Her teeth found his lips and she fixed herself on him, again and again, as if she would swallow him. He held his arms rigid, keeping himself as tense as he could to keep from crushing her to powder against him. Yet he could not keep those arms from pulling her closer, his rigid fists from caressing her shoulders as gently as his inflamed body knew how. 

She flung herself at him, and he let her, allowing her to control his body, to push him to his back on her bed, to cover him with her tiny strength. She pulled away from his lips, her wild, desperate mouth kissing and biting down his face, his throat, and he groaned. There had not been a single sexual thought that had even touched him since Catherine’s "death". Now it all surged back through him like a volcano, firing every portion of his flesh, burning along every hair, gripping his heart in a vice. 

He gripped tight to his words before they fled before the onslaught. No! Not like this! He could not control himself, he knew. He doubted Catherine would even try, as desperate as she seemed to be. They would alert the other members of the institution, the officials, the nurses. They would be found out, and that would be the end of all. 

With a monumental effort against the inexorable tide of their need for each other, Vincent took hold of Catherine’s shoulders and forced themselves back to a sitting position. For a long moment he held her there, their breath heaving in a mutual windstorm. "We must end this," he whispered. 

"No!" Catherine gripped him tightly and tried to pull him back to her. 

"Not this," he said, and kissed her briefly. "Not us. You and I will never be apart. But this half life you lead here... this must be over. It’s time for you to leave this place."

Catherine swallowed. "I don’t have anywhere else to go. The outside world has no place for me."

"I understand that," he said. She still did not believe that he was real, that the world Below was a real place. It didn’t matter. She was ready to accept it, even if it did not exist. That was enough for her, and it was enough for him. To get her out of here, to begin her healing, was the important thing now. 

"I’m going to tell you something now, and you must believe me. Tomorrow," he said, "Diana will come to see you again. She will bring with her a guest, a face you will recognize. You will know who he is, but you must not say it. When you see them, I want you to remember that I was here with you tonight, and that I will be with you, always. You hold your own strength. Bear that in mind when they come to you."

Catherine swallowed. "Will I be frightened?" 

"Perhaps," he said. "But you have lived in fear, swum in fear, swallowed fear so long it is all you know. See through the fear, and search for the hope. And at the end of that dark tunnel, we will find each other again. I swear it."

"I believe you," she said. 

Vincent knew he had to leave. He couldn’t be so close to her, not with the hunger that was raging in his blood. He knew better than to fear that hunger, but he had to fight it now, until the time and the place was safe for both of them. He stood, forcing his arms to release her. "Believe  _in_ me, Catherine. Believe in the possibility." He paused in the window. "Believe in the dream."

***


	6. Chapter 6

> Chapter 6
> 
> ***
> 
> When Charlotte awoke the next morning she felt better than she had ever felt. She dressed before joining the rest of the inmates in the dining room for breakfast, something she had never done before. For the first time she met her fellow inmate’s eyes. A girl with Downs Syndrome asked her politely how she was feeling, and Charlotte actually responded with a smile. The girl looked taken aback, and Charlotte realized she sat next to this girl every day for over a year, and never before spoken with her. "I’m feeling so much better," she said. 
> 
> The Downs girl looked pleased. "That’s good," she said. "It’s hard to feel sad." 
> 
> "It is," Charlotte said. "But it’s sometimes hard to feel any other way." She smiled broadly. "I feel good today." 
> 
> The round faced girl stood up and gave Charlotte a big hug. "Happy Birthday," she said, and Charlotte laughed. 
> 
> "It’s not my birthday," she tried to explain. 
> 
> "You feel good," she said. "It’s your birthday."
> 
> Charlotte looked about her. The cutout flowers on the dining hall walls and the May baskets that still graced the tables looked cheerful. She could see that, even here, there were things people looked forward to and enjoyed. Even here, there were people who lived A Happy Life. The girl who had hugged her, for example, seemed happy. Charlotte had never, ever seen that before. "You know, you’re right," she said. "I think it might be my birthday, after all."
> 
> She returned to her room after breakfast because she still wasn’t up to much socializing. Speaking for more than ten minutes to any of the other inmates wearied her. She was out of practice and easily overwhelmed. But the angry, dragging despair which had pulled her down for the last year had lifted. She kept closing her eyes, remembering the feel of Vincent’s lips on hers, his arms around her, the scent of his hair. No matter if it was all a waking dream. No matter if it was madness. It was happiness, and if it was madness, she was complete as a madwoman. It didn’t matter at all. 
> 
> At ten o’clock, Dr. Malachy poked her head around her door. "Charlotte? There’s someone here to see you."
> 
> "Diana Bennet?" 
> 
> "Yes," Dr. Malachy said. "She’s right behind me. She’s brought some friends, I hope that’s okay. I can ask them to wait in the common room, if that’s too hard for you."
> 
> "No, that’s fine," Charlotte said. To herself she added. "I am not afraid." 
> 
> Diana came in first, by herself, and smiled. Charlotte rose from her chair and greeted her with a warm hug. "Thank you for coming," she said. 
> 
> "I had to come," Diana said. "I had to introduce you to some people." She instructed Charlotte to sit on her bed, and then poked her head back around the door. "You can come in, now," she said. "Charlotte, I would like to introduce you to Jacob, and his grandfather."
> 
> The first face she saw was an older man, a man she recognized all too well. His eyes heavy with wisdom above a well trimmed beard, his stance awkward, in clothing that looked as though it had come from a period play set in the nineteen forties. He looked wary, but the expression that was strongest on his face was a kind of worried joy. One hand leaned heavily on a cane but the other held the arm of a golden haired child.
> 
> The child looked about three. His hair was long, cut in a pageboy, and his skin was very pale. He was dressed in clothing so new that there was still a tag on one trouser leg. His eyes, when he looked at her, were huge and blue and soulful. He bit his lips tightly, and did not smile. But when he saw her he tugged on his grandfather’s hand so roughly that the older man lost his grip, and the boy made a beeline for Catherine’s lap. "Mommy!" he said, and buried his head in her shoulder. 
> 
> "Jacob," she whispered. _"Jacob!"_
> 
> "I _knew_ you weren’t dead! I told Father!" 
> 
> Catherine pulled the boy back to stare into his face. It was longer than hers, with a prominent chin, but he bore her nose, her brow, her cheekbones, with Vincent’s eyes staring back at her. He bit his lips tightly.
> 
> She frowned. "Why are you doing that?" she asked, pointing at his lips. 
> 
> "I’m not s’posed to smile," he whispered to her. 
> 
> "Well, you smile," she whispered back. "I won’t tell anyone." 
> 
> In reply the boy’s lips spread in a charming, toothsome grin, and Vincent’s teeth gleamed from within his young mouth. Catherine stared at them in wonder for a moment, and then laughed, holding the boy so tightly he squirmed in her grip. 
> 
> She let him whisper to her for a long time, telling her everything he could possibly think to tell her about his tiny, short life. There wasn’t much, and he repeated himself a lot, and she loved every word. 
> 
> For the benefit of Dr. Malachy, who stood by the door and listened to every word that was spoken aloud, Diana explained that the boy had been adopted, and lived with his "grandfather", and that "Charlotte" was welcome to be a large part of the boy’s life. Dr. Malachy stood with an amazed look on her face. Happy endings did not often come in her line of work. Charlotte did not look like Charlotte. Her dull, mechanical voice had changed into something musical and childlike. Her sallow, emotionless face was animated and bright, and her dull, lifeless hazel eyes were a laughing, joyous green. This was not the half dead, listless, dysthymic Charlotte Bakster. This was someone else entirely. The name Diana had mentioned the first day she visited came to her. _Catherine_. Thank God, Charlotte was dead, and this Catherine had been resurrected from her ashes. Muriel Malachy was sure to hold this day forever in her heart. 
> 
> When Charlotte finally hefted the boy to her hip and approached her, Muriel was fairly certain she knew what she was going to say. "Dr. Malachy?" she asked. "I ask to be discharged from this institution." 
> 
> ***

It took most of the afternoon to get the paperwork signed and organized, but despite being tedious, it wasn’t difficult. For more than a year now Charlotte had been a voluntary patient. Any time she wanted to go, it was up to her. 

Dr. Malachy wanted to be assured that she had a place to go. Diana handed her rental papers for a studio apartment which, she said, was down the street from where Jacob and his "adopted" family lived. Diana was merely handing over the receipt for her own apartment, but appearances had to be maintained. 

Catherine took nothing more than the clothes she left the institute in. She wanted no reminders of the half-life she’d lived there. It was dark by the time Diana drove them back to the city, to the entrance in Central Park. Catherine hesitated at the entrance to the drainage ditch, but Jacob held her hand in his, and Father was there, anxious to return to his peaceful life Below, and she followed them into her fantasies and hoped she wasn’t about to go mad. 

With a sound like a dream returned, the gate opened and the drainage tunnel entrance rolled aside. And there, backlit and glorious, was Vincent, waiting for her. 

Until that very moment, standing facing him in the drainage tunnel, Catherine hadn’t truly believed. Now, holding her son in her wasted arms, she stepped across the threshold and fell against her beloved. He took the weight of the boy in his arm, and took the weight of the years apart with the other, as he wrapped it securely around her shoulder. "It’s over, Catherine," he murmured against her hair. "You’re home."

***


	7. Chapter 7

> Chapter 7
> 
> ***
> 
> As much as everyone wanted to have a party, an impromptu Winterfest celebration, Vincent knew Catherine wasn’t yet up to such stress. Too many people at once was likely to overwhelm her. Instead an informal queue lined up outside their chambers. One or two at a time, the members of the community Below came inside, sometimes giving them a break between visitors. Catherine was hugged more times in two hours than she could count. 
> 
> Some of the tunnel folk brought her gifts. Every one wanted to, but Vincent had made them promise not to overwhelm her. Instead of a massive pile of welcoming presents, she had a small handful of truly meaningful ones. A wardrobe of clothes, fit for a tunnel princess, all beautiful and strange and functional. Peter and Diana both brought some of her things from her old life, her first life. Diana brought her photographs and memories and trinkets from her childhood, old dolls and letters and her high school journal; all things which she had used to build her own tiny fragment of Catherine’s spirit. Peter brought those things which held both intrinsic and sentimental value which he couldn’t allow to go to charity or auction, no matter that the proceeds of that auction had gone to the Margaret Chase trust, and therefore to her family Below. Family heirlooms and antiques which her parents had collected. 
> 
> When the line came to Brian he wandered in rather hesitantly. "Hi, Ms. Chandler," he said with a shy grin. "When they slipped the message to me to come Below, I wasn’t sure why. I’m sure glad you’re all right."
> 
> "Brian?" Catherine asked. She smiled at him but was confused. "Why did they tell you?" 
> 
> "You didn’t know? I thought you didn’t recognize me." He looked at Vincent. "I’m the one who saw her at the Institute." 
> 
> The one who had put both the Lady Catherine and Sir Vincent into a story, and pulled her from her tomb. Catherine put Jacob off her lap and stood up to hug Brian. "Thank you!" she whispered. "You’re a real prince, Brian." She kissed his cheek. 
> 
> Brian blushed all the way up to the hairline. 
> 
> Vincent touched the boy’s shoulder. "I will always be in your debt, Brian," he said. "Anything you need, you be sure to let me know."
> 
> "Get me out of twelfth grade chemistry?" Brian asked. Then he laughed. "Just kidding. I’m just happy to help."
> 
> "I can’t get you out of it," Vincent said, "but if you’d like to come down here, I can help you study." 
> 
> Brian blinked. "Woah, really? I can come down? Whenever I want?"
> 
> "Whenever you want." It was true. From then on, Brian was considered a modest hero, and became a frequent visitor to the world Below. 
> 
> So many friends came and welcomed her to her new life. Pascal and Mary, the children (not such children any longer,) Samantha and Kipper and Geoffrey, Lena with Baby Cathy on her hip, and Mouse, who nearly set the room on fire with the glowing Welcome Home display he’d concocted. 
> 
> Catherine grew tired long before it was over, but she didn’t dare say anything. She wanted to see _everybody_ , to be certain that everyone was real and here and waiting for her. She had agonized over which part of her personality every member of the community Below had represented. Some had been easy; Pascal was obviously her work ethic, Jamie her sense of adventure, Father her cautious wisdom, Mary her nurturing streak. But who the heck was Mouse? And where did Lena fit in? Seeing each of them as real and whole people was a relief as profound as realizing she wasn’t mad. 
> 
> Finally the queue dispersed, the receiving line was finished, and Catherine heaved a deep sigh. "This is home," she whispered. 
> 
> "You are home," Vincent said. "And we are safe – together." 
> 
> "Together." She nuzzled the sleeping child in her arms and tried to stifle a yawn. "Where does he sleep?" 
> 
> Vincent pointed at the tapestry which partially blocked the boy’s alcove from the rest of the room. "There, usually, but Lena thought... ah." 
> 
> Lena looked in and grinned. "Looks like he’s been ready for a while. I’ll get him."
> 
> Catherine raised a questioning eyebrow. 
> 
> "Jacob’s going to sleep in the bunk room with Mary and the other children tonight," Lena explained. "He’s done it before, he likes it," she added. As she took the sleeping child from Catherine’s arms she smiled. "I’m so happy you’ve come back. This world wasn’t the same without you."
> 
> Catherine had heard those words three dozen times since she’d come into this chamber, but they were as welcome now as they had been the first time.
> 
> "Who’s idea was that?" Catherine asked when they were gone. 
> 
> Vincent looked a trifle embarrassed. "Lena’s." Catherine realized she had to thank the ex-prostitute for that. "She was quite insistent. She is a little forward about such things, but I thought she was probably right. You need peace for your first night." 
> 
> Catherine swallowed. "You’re not leaving, are you?"
> 
> Vincent shook his head. "Never," he whispered. 
> 
> She buried her face in his chest and breathed in the wild scent of him. "I’m so tired," she breathed. "But I’m afraid to go to sleep. I’m afraid I’ll wake up and it will all have vanished."
> 
> Vincent kissed the top of her head, and then her forehead. "I will hold you as you sleep," he promised. "And I will be there at the end of all your dreams, holding tight to you." 
> 
> She was too tired for more than a gentle kiss, but even that was an ecstasy of bliss as she curled up beside him in the dark. Their limbs intertwined in a lover’s knot, and Vincent found it difficult to close his eyes. Long after Catherine had succumbed to slumber he lay awake, watching her, memorizing the new lines on her face. It was several hours before his eyes closed, and he let his new joy envelop him into sleep. 
> 
> ***
> 
> Vincent awoke from one hell to another as Catherine’s cry of pain rang in his ears. He forced himself upright, his heart beating so strongly he felt his veins about to burst. "Oh, ow!" Catherine whimpered, cradling the side of her stomach. 
> 
> "Catherine!" Vincent stared in horror at the thin lines of crimson which marred her pale flesh, revealed through the shredded nightdress she wore. He didn’t have to ask whether he had done it. Her blood still graced his claws. "No!" He gasped and almost coughed his denial of this most horrifying of images. His breath got lost somewhere in his chest he scrambled away, fleeing from the bed, running from the love he did not deserve to have. 
> 
> He didn’t get farther than a foot before she launched herself at him, holding him firmly by the shoulders. He fell to his knees and she hung upon him with all her weight, hanging half off the bed. "Don’t you leave!" she breathed, and her tears fell onto his hair. 
> 
> His words came in an anguished groan. "What have I done?"
> 
> "You were dreaming, Vincent," Catherine told him, her breath coming in gasps. "Come sit. We’ll talk this through. _Don’t you leave!_ " 
> 
> It was only the desperation in her voice that cut through his revulsion. She wasn’t begging for _his_ well being. Her psyche was still too fragile to be left alone.
> 
> He sat perfectly still until he realized she was in a very uncomfortable position, and likely in pain. He shifted and caught her in his arms, letting her fall into his lap, her arms still locked around his shoulders. "Forgive me, my love."
> 
> "There’s nothing to forgive," she said. " _Nothing_. I will not endure more years of watching you run from me! I can’t do it, Vincent, I haven’t the strength!"
> 
> "Shh, shh," he whispered. "I won’t run." He kissed her forehead again and again. "I swear to you I won’t run." He would give up sleeping forever, and never part day from night. He would cut his hands off at the wrists, but he would not run from her. For a long, long time they sat in the dark on the cold stone floor, each in their own separate hell. After some time he buried his nose in her shorn hair. "I thought it was safe," he said, and the tears began to fall. "The nightmares had _stopped_." 
> 
> "They never stop," Catherine said into his chest. "I have them too. They only wait until you start to feel better. Then they come back. Then they sleep, until something reminds you of them. They’re your mind, Vincent. They aren’t a plague or a disease. Dr. Malachy says they come back when your heart starts to heal. Your mind tries to come to terms with all that’s happened to you, so it brings it all back in your dreams." 
> 
> " _She_ doesn’t know," Vincent said. 
> 
> "Don’t blame her for not accepting you," she said. "My rational mind couldn’t accept you, either. She _was_ a very good psychiatrist." 
> 
> "Perhaps," he said. "But I am not the same as everyone else."
> 
> Catherine sighed. "Oh, I’m too tired to argue. Just swear you won’t let go of me."
> 
> "I swear," Vincent promised. He picked her up and lay her back upon the bed. Her wounds had bled across the pretty tunnel nightdress, and he fought back bile. "May I light a candle?"
> 
> She nodded and he did let go of her, but only for a moment, long enough to light enough candles to assess the damage he had done. He breathed a sigh of relief when he pulled aside the rent fabric. It was only a few layers of skin, likely not deep enough even to scar. He hadn’t been attacking her, after all, it had only been his violent thrashings as he battled through his nightmare. Still, even that was too much. "I’m so sorry, Catherine."
> 
> "Don’t be," she said. "I _like_ the pain. I know I’m alive." 
> 
> "No, Catherine."
> 
> "I felt _nothing_ before, Vincent," she said. "Not pain, not joy, not even boredom. I was dead. I’d rather you ripped me limb from limb than return to that emptiness."
> 
> He looked away. In his unconscious rage, he knew he could have. Her hand caressed his face. "You haven’t been well, either," she said. "Tell me." 
> 
> He hadn’t meant to burden her with his woes, but her voice, _her_ voice, drew him deep from within. "I died when you did, Catherine. I was couched in my own hell. Hard won, the ground I covered back." He looked down, ashamed. "I should have known I could not... live again the dream we shared before."
> 
> She kissed him, gently, and he did not pull away. "We can," she said gently. "We need to take it one day, one step, one problem at a time. Your nightmares _will_ cease. In the meantime, I suggest we get Lucia to make you some mittens." He looked at her, taken aback. "Leather mittens, for you to wear at night." 
> 
> "What?" 
> 
> "You were going to protest we could never sleep in the same bed again, yes?" 
> 
> She knew him. 
> 
> "I don’t accept that. Accept my compromise, or we deal with the risk." 
> 
> "That could end in your death."
> 
> "So, it’s the compromise." 
> 
> He closed his eyes. The thought of never holding her through his sleep was painful. "Yes," he said. 
> 
> The scent of her blood was making him a little crazy. He gently touched her hip, near the wound. "Let me tend this." 
> 
> She nodded, and he left to get the first aid kit he kept near Jacob’s alcove, mostly to tend similar wounds which Jacob had been known to inflict upon himself during his own childish nightmares. He carried it back to the bed and sat down beside her. A basin of water had been left near the fire grate, and he fetched this now, and a clean cloth. After washing the blood from his own claws, he lifted up her nightdress to clean the wound. The warm water washed away the already drying blood, and cleaned the threads of her nightdress from the three, parallel wounds. "It shouldn’t scar," he said, more to reassure himself than her. 
> 
> "I hope it does," she said. "I hope to keep a mark of this night, when I’m back together with you." She touched the line of scar on the side of her face. "This one is from when you first found me." She touched the velvety fur on the side of his face. "Where are yours, Vincent?"
> 
> "Too deep to see," he said. "I fear too deep to heal." He dried the wounds and treated them with an antiseptic, and then bound them with gauze and surgical tape. The days of the tunnels being short on necessity were over, between Margaret’s trust and the extra money added to it from Catherine’s estate. Whenever he treated Jacob, and half the time when they ate, Vincent always thought how his beloved was contributing to their care. 
> 
> "You will heal, Vincent," Catherine said. "And so will I. I believe in the impossible now."
> 
> He looked at her a bit ruefully. "You’re back with me. I should too."
> 
> "But you don’t?" 
> 
> He shook his head. "I believed... when I first knew you lived, and still loved me... that all would be well. I believed the moment I had you here, Below, with me, that I would stop grieving. I haven’t. I grieve for you still. It’s like a shadow in my mind, trying to swallow up my happiness. And I regret... I regret every moment I was with you and did not take you into my arms, into my bed, all the years I made you endure my cowardice. I regret every time I didn’t trust you to accept me, to love me, all the time with you I wasted. I regret..." and here the tears began, and he could not banish them away. "I regret leaving you in your darkest hour, condemning you to the blackness that consumed you. I regret abandoning you. I regret failing to recognize your life could be saved by a simple injection. And I’m _so_ sorry, Catherine! I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry." 
> 
> "It wasn’t you!" she whispered, pressing her lips to his cheek. "I’m so sorry I couldn’t force my breath, force my heart stronger in my chest so that you would know I hadn’t left you. I’m so sorry I couldn’t trust in you, couldn’t trust in our love. I’m so sorry I didn’t run as far and as fast as I could to get back to you the moment I could find my own voice again." She was weeping, too. "I’m sorry I let you travel through your grief, all alone. Vincent, I regret, too." 
> 
> "It wasn’t your fault." 
> 
> "It wasn’t yours," she said back. 
> 
> He took a deep breath. "We have to shed these regrets, don’t we. Shed them like a weight, so that we can go forward." 
> 
> Catherine lay her nose beside his. "Go forward with me, Vincent. Take this rent and bloodstained dress from me." 
> 
> He couldn’t be sure if it was his state of mind or the years apart or the adrenaline that still lurked in his veins from his nightmare and the subsequent drama, but those extremely graphic words were like a lighting bolt. They could have killed him on the spot, or they could cause a dying heart to beat again. 
> 
> A terrible growl ripped from his throat and his hands closed on her arms. His tears were banished, but he could still feel them trembling on his cheeks. His words went gleefully on a delightful vacation somewhere sunny, and he desperately wanted to pull her close. Then he paused. This was too much passion, while she was still weak from a year of inactivity and depression. He craved her too much to fall headlong into this frenzy. 
> 
> She knew him. "Don’t you dare," she breathed, sensing his indecision. 
> 
> If he was still capable of anything so human as laughter, he would have laughed. The deep throated sigh he gave might have been a chuckle. He lunged himself forward until he had her pressed beneath him, felt her tiny body against every line of his. He bent forward to kiss her, and the taste of her was sweeter than blood or wine. It wasn’t enough, though. He sat upright and fixed his hands on the collar of her pretty, brand-new tunnel nightdress. Without a moment’s hesitation, he ripped it down the center, tearing it from her with a unrestrainedly sensual sound. 
> 
> She cried out, and at first a part of him thought he might have hurt her. But she was grabbing at his night shirt, and he realized she was only pleased. That pleased him. His mouth split into a feral grin, and he let her pull the nightshirt over his head. 
> 
> He had her straddled, and the moment his shirt was off he bent down over her, anxious to feel her skin against him. With one thrust he pushed his fullness against her stomach, and that was nice. She was warm and soft, and the urgency faced from his eyes. Better to savor this. Better to taste her slowly. He licked her lips and slowly shifted until she was half on top of him. The soft skin of her back was warm against his palms, and she rubbed her hands up and down the fur on his chest as if she was going to crawl inside him. Her hands reached down to untie the drawstring on his trousers, and he half growled, half purred as she pulled the soft fabric over his erection. 
> 
> He kicked the unnecessary piece of fabric off and surveyed the flesh of the woman who nestled so neatly beside him. Perfect. He needed to taste her. There was the perfect spot, round and soft and just at his eye level. He pushed her gently onto her back and licked the little knob of flesh upon her breast. Oh, that was delightful! As was the little sound she made, a pleased whimper. He licked it again and again, finally closing his mouth around it and suckling. He wanted to chew, but restrained himself. This was his woman, he needed to keep her undamaged. His right hand traveled up and found her other breast, round and full and just the right size. It filled his hand perfectly, and he slowly kneaded the soft flesh, gently, not strong enough to break the skin, but he could feel it beneath his claws, and that felt good. 
> 
> "Nngh!" she groaned. 
> 
> Ooh, that was nice! Why didn’t she make that sound again? In the hopes that he could pull it out of her he shifted sides, unintentionally shifting his body until his hip pushed between her legs. With his left hand he kneaded her right breast while his mouth turned its attention to its new toy. She pushed up against him, and he felt moisture on his hip. The sound she made this time was even better. 
> 
> He looked up at her, and something changed. Something sweet and valuable lay here beneath him. He could almost find her name, but the name had fled along with the rest of his words. It didn’t matter. This was _her_ , and the sudden wonder of _her_ being here with him overwhelmed him. He crept up her gently, hesitantly, as if she might push him away, and very slowly brushed his lips against hers. The kiss bounced back and forth between them hesitantly, sometimes a kiss and sometimes not, and each time it wasn’t it made the next time sweeter still. Then he pulled away and stared at her. Her eyes, her hair, the red blush on her cheeks, was all so  _beautiful_. 
> 
> "I love you," she told him. 
> 
> He understood the words, and wanted to say them back, but he couldn’t find them. The confusion must have shown in his eyes because she kissed him and then whispered against his mouth, "It’s okay." 
> 
> It was okay. He bit her lip gently to show that it was, and she grunted with pleasure. He tried it again, on her jawline, and down her throat, careful not to use the sharp fangs, but only the blunt little teeth at the front of his mouth. Then he licked her throat, absorbing the strong pheremones she released there, and kissed it, rubbing his face all into her scent. 
> 
> She made another of those small, delightful sounds, and picked up his right hand. He let her, and she brought it to her lips, gently nipping the pad of each fingertip, making him purr with pleasure. He pulled his hand away and touched her cheek with the tip of his sharp claws. Very, very gently he ran them down her face, along her neck, touched them to the quivering butterfly of her pulse. Both of them were aware at that moment that he held her life in his hand. And what he did was to run his thumb gently along the throbbing vein, and follow up the touch with a kiss. 
> 
> Her hands were on his back now, holding him to her, running up and down his muscles, and he flexed his shoulders at how good it felt. 
> 
> She made another of those sounds again, and he ran his head down along her torso, stopping to investigate her navel with his tongue. She laughed at this, and he did it again. With a somewhat indignant squeal she pushed his head away from it. He chuckled a purr and ran his nose along her stomach until he came to a white bandage. He could smell her blood beneath it. His words may have fled, but his memory was still intact. He knew what had happened here, and he felt sorry for it. Very, very gently he nuzzled it, and her hands found his hair and stroked it. 
> 
> The sound he made came from his throat, like a growl or a purr, but it was a sound of remorse. "Hm," she said in reply, and he knew his apology was accepted. 
> 
> Now that he was down here, a positively delectable scent was calling to him. There, between her legs, was something he knew would cause her to make a great deal of noise. He found it first with his nose, and her body unfolded around him, her knees coming up to protect him. He touched the tender nub with his tongue, and she sighed with contentment. Nice, but it could be nicer. He lapped at it, loving how it changed shape beneath his tongue, how her body shivered when he pushed on it so gently, and now she was humming, her voice punctuated by her breath, which was coming rather uneven, and he opened his mouth to suck on the little knob, and she cried out and her legs shuddered and pulled around him, and he licked it one last time, and she lifted his head and sighed at him, and he thought he should probably stop, now. He wiped his chin on the convenient nest of curls which waited just above there. 
> 
> He began to crawl back up over her body, and he looked down on her, lying luxuriously upon his bed. Tears touched her cheek, and he bent down and licked them, concerned. "Just happy," she murmured, and he lifted himself back up. He could have hung over her for half an eternity, but she had other ideas. She placed her hands upon his chest and pushed him, gently, until he lay on his back. He let her, mostly out of curiosity, and was pleased when she followed and stretched her legs to straddle him. Moist and ready she lowered herself onto his shaft, and he purred with contentment as he felt her slide up and down him. Again and again she rubbed that hot, wet channel over him, and smiled as she let him fill her again and again and again. 
> 
> Nice as this was, it wasn’t really what he wanted. He took hold of her gently and guided her off. She climbed off readily, but only to change positions, and the hot channel she touched him with now was her mouth. He closed his eyes this time, feeling the tiny buds of her teeth as they gently ran down his shaft, the wet wildness of her tongue as it caressed him. Ooh, that might be _too_ nice! But this wasn’t what he wanted, either, and he gently guided her away and turned her over and perched himself behind her and entered her that way, and she pushed herself against him and his hands found her shoulders and he thrust and thrust and thrust into her...
> 
> But something was wrong. Something was missing, and it galled him. They had done this before, but something wasn’t right. He kissed her shoulder to let her know, and turned her over and stared at her. Her eyes were bright with hunger, despite all the play they had been through, and he thought she sensed something missing too, else why would she still be hungry? What was it? He was still inside her, and it kind of felt good just to sit here, still, filling her, being a part of her. But something was still missing. 
> 
> "Please," she whispered. "I want it."
> 
> He wanted it too, but he wanted it right. His eyes bored into hers, concerned, frustrated, and she closed her eyes. "Please, Vincent. Fill me."
> 
> The words made sense to him. Double sense. He wanted her to fill him! Couldn’t she understand? His hands sneaked up and he held her face between them and stared into her eyes. There was a word he needed, the most important word in the universe. It took him long minutes to find it. "Catherine," he whispered. 
> 
> She groaned then beneath him, and arched her back and pushed herself into him, and he grunted with relief and tucked his hands around her back and let it all wash through him and through her and breathed in every nuance of her as they came together into their newly resurrected Bond. 
> 
> He lay atop her, breathing in gasps, but it was less from the climax (lovely as it had been) than from the relief. He felt as if he had just regained his sight. The woman he held was no longer a blind spot in his sixth sense. She was a bright rainbow of radiant color, brighter and more beautiful than any he had ever known. He rolled off her, pulled her warm nude body into a nest made by his own. 
> 
> "Catherine," he breathed. "It’s..."
> 
> "I know," she cooed. "It’s back." She buried her head into his chest and a sob touched her voice. "When... when Jacob was inside me, I think it all had to go to him. But once he wasn’t anymore... I didn’t want it to go to you. It was all pain and sadness and fear and nothingness." She looked up at him, and he regarded her with steady blue eyes. "When you found me in the park, and put me back together, I rebuilt myself around you. You had so much strength, I thought. I knew later that you had your vulnerabilities, and I had to be gentle around them. With that much pain inside me... I knew I couldn’t hurt you with it. I was blocking you," she whispered. 
> 
> Vincent had always known that Catherine was the one with the control valve on their Bond. She was the only one who had ever managed to turn it off, when Paracelsus had abducted her and taken her to a dark world even further beneath their world. He had suspected, when he discovered that Catherine had been carrying their child, that the pregnancy has somehow interrupted their Bond. But the blind spot in his senses had been a constant aggravation, and only Catherine could lift the veil and let him fully back into her life. 
> 
> And she had!
> 
> "I love you," he told her. 
> 
> It took him a minute to realize that she had said the same words, at the same time. 

***

Epilogue. 

Vincent’s Journal. 

June 15th. 

It’s been more than a month now, and so far all is well. The nightmares haven’t stopped, for either of us, but we have each other to hold when we wake up from them. Diana asked Catherine if she had her permission to tell Joe Maxwell that she was alive and relocated through the "witness protection program." She thought he deserved it, for putting Diana on the case in the first place. Catherine told her to just tell him she was "happy". 

Jacob adores his mother, and she is enthralled with everything he does. She finds him considerably more uncanny than I do, but she hasn’t watched him every moment. 

Catherine still won’t hear of ever going Above in the daylight, but I’ve finally persuaded her to come with me for a walk in the park this evening. I have faith her fears will fade, given enough time. As my grief is a scar I will bear forever, her fear is a barrier she will always have to face. But we are both safe here Below, and happy in each other, and even with the burdens of our tragedies, we have all we truly need. 

Regret still weighs heavy in me, but I do my best to make up for it by seizing every moment, cherishing every gift. In the end, we’ve passed through all the horrors and wrong turns and tragedies in our lives, and come back to the surface. 

Though they go mad, they shall be sane;  
Though they sink through the sea, they shall rise again;  
Though lovers be lost, love shall not;  
And death shall have no dominion. 


End file.
